LONDON (UNITED KINGDOM)
The Telegraph [London, England]
November 22, 2024
By Janet Eastham
Hugh Palmer and three others have permission to officiate withdrawn following Makin Report
A former chaplain to the late Queen is among four priests who have had their licences suspended by the Church following a damning abuse report.
The Diocese of London has withdrawn permission to officiate (PTO) from three clergy pending an investigation into their involvement in the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, while the Diocese of Gloucester said it had suspended the PTO of Rev Nick Stott, a priest from Cheltenham.
Smyth, a barrister who led Christian youth camps in Dorset known as the Iwerne Camps in the 1970s and 1980s, abused up to 130 boys across three countries before his death in 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa.
A PTO is a licence granted by a Bishop allowing clergy to conduct services and perform ministerial duties. Their removal marks a formal escalation in the Church’s response to the findings.
It follows an intervention by the Bishop of Newcastle, the Right Rev Helen-Ann Hartley, whose call for the Most Rev Justin Welby to resign as the Archbishop of Canterbury proved decisive. On Wednesday, she called for those criticised in the report, by former social services director Keith Makin, to step back from ministry.
The Telegraph understands that 30 Anglican Church officials face dismissal for failing to prevent the actions of the institution’s most prolific child abuser. So far, only the Archbishop has resigned.
But on Friday, a spokesman for the Diocese of London announced that “working in co-ordination with the National Safeguarding Team, following the publication of the Makin Review, the PTOs of Hugh Palmer, Sue Colman and Rico Tice have been withdrawn pending further investigation.”
Hugh Palmer, chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II from 2012 to 2020, was cited in the Makin Report for visiting a victim of Smyth’s abuse in hospital twice in 1982, with the first visit one day after the young man attempted to take his own life.
Subjected to escalating beatings that left his backside bleeding, a victim attempted suicide by overdosing on pills and cutting his wrists. He dreaded an upcoming “special and more severe” beating of up to 400 lashes, intended to mark his 21st birthday – a milestone he resolved not to reach.
The report said: “Hugh Palmer visits victim [and] tells victim he was extremely sympathetic to abuse suffered at [the] hands of John Smyth.”
The victim said they now suspect such visits were orchestrated by Smyth or the Iwerne youth camp network to monitor him, behaviour other victims alleged they also observed from evangelical clergy in the group.
The report said: “Victims have told us that this contact was not requested by them, but that it was proactively made by the individual clergy, by letter or phone, at the time feeling surprised by this and recalled how this was an unusual step, not something they had previously experienced, except in terms of John Smyth’s approach to their grooming.
“At the time they felt it was offered in a supportive way but with hindsight, they reflected this may have been offered more for reasons of oversight and monitoring.”
Rev Palmer denied this claim, telling Makin that he had not realised the suicide attempt “was connected with abuse” and that his involvement was motivated by “genuine concern”.
After Channel 4 News made Smyth’s abuse public in a series of reports broadcast in 2017, Rev Palmer called the victim. The survivor said: “He was pretty clear that I hadn’t talked about the abuse at all but that he ‘knew’ a little by his second visit although it wasn’t until the Channel 4 reports that he knew the full extent.”
Rev Rico Tice had been granted PTO by the Diocese of London after leaving All Souls, Langham Place last year.
He announced his departure from the Church of England earlier this year in protest against moves to bless same-sex couples, opting to worship at a Presbyterian church.
The prominent evangelical, who learned of the abuse in 1987, 30 years before it was made public, was described by The Times as saying his “heart aches” for Smyth’s victims.
He said: “As a university student in the spring of 1987, I was told that boys at Iwerne camps had been beaten. At that time I was not aware of the dreadful severity of those beatings, certainly not that they amounted to criminal assault.”
He added he had “made my concerns known soon afterwards” and said he “reported what I knew to senior people in the Iwerne camp [run by Smyth] more than once”.
Rev Sue Colman, the suspended associate minister at St Leonard’s Church in Oakley, Hampshire, and her husband, Sir Jamie Colman, heir to the Colman’s mustard fortune, funded Smyth’s youth camps in southern Africa from 1989.
While it was announced on November 14 that the Diocese of Winchester had asked her to step back, she has now had her permission to officiate formally suspended in the London diocese.
Rev Stott, who stayed with the Smyth in Zimbabwe on several occasions in the 1990s, is said to have witnessed “surprising” behaviour. Despite having been warned about Smyth by a clergyman, he became a trustee of a charity run by the Colmans that funded the child abusers African youth camps, and in 2001 took on a leadership role at the Zimbabwe camps.
Rev Stott told reviewers he was one of the first on the scene following the death of Guide Nyachuru, the 16-year-old boy who died in suspicious circumstances in a pool in one of Smyth’s Zimbabwe camps in 1992. Smyth was later charged with culpable homicide but the trial collapsed.
He said: “My role was to go down to what we called the flag lawn right by the swimming pool. We probably had 45 minutes to an hour before the wake-up bell rang and my job was just to make sure while the body was still in the pool no-one else came near.”
The review outlined how Rev Stott was told of “an issue” with Smyth in the 1980s, but said the details were not disclosed to him.
He said he felt at the time that it was “not his place to go investigating rumours” but in hindsight, he wishes he had done so.
He added that he had “a confidence that any matters would have been investigated and dealt with by people he trusted.”
Rev Stott, Rev Colman and Rev Palmer have been approached for comment.