Anne Atkins: inside the Sexual Apartheid of John Smyth's Summer Camps
Telegraph
I looked up to John Smyth as a distantly alluring adult when I was a tiny child: handsome, brilliant, charismatic. He was a Beach Mission leader during our seaside holidays, and Christian role model for many – including my brother (who would probably still say he owes him much: there was good there too). Thanks to John Smyth my brother became an officer on Iwerne Christian camps, and the summer before I went up to Oxford I was invited too. In my teens I met many of my brother’s friends: Christian, good-looking, sporty, decent, public-school-and-Oxbridge-edu cated, many of them blues. Destined for ordained ministry; or as teachers; lawyers; businessmen. My parents couldn’t have wanted nicer friends for me. (Nor I, for my daughters.) These were extremely pleasant young men. Their sisters helped at Iwerne (and often found husbands!) I was looking forward to it immensely. Within twenty four hours I felt a complete freak. Unknown to me, it was a world of extreme sexual apartheid. We were confined to the kitchen bashing spuds. The men, glorious in the sunshine and their cream cricket sweaters, played sports; gave talks in the meetings; swam and batted and even I believe flew aeroplanes. I was discreetly steered away from volunteering for a helicopter trip advertised over breakfast; told off for stopping to chat to a young man I was introduced to destined for the same Oxford college; then for agreeing to play tennis with my brother (he was not); and finally for talking to some boys who lay down near us at the swimming pool. It was the last straw: it was politely suggested I should leave, as I didn’t fit in. It was not until the following weekend, reintroduced to normality at my parents’, that I realised I was not an aberration. Iwerne was out of step with the world, not I. My husband – not eligible because not public-school-educated, but with his clergy world heavily influenced by it – has boasted ever since that I am the only person to have been sent down from one of its camps. Iwerne was – is – its own world. Imagine a coterie of every glamorous person you know, all those you admire, men (or women) you have modelled yourself on since childhood. In understanding, by comparison, the plight of young Asian women going against their culture and families, we must understand the weight of lifelong opinion, the ties of real affection, the bereavement of losing all those you care about, the devastation of your world thereafter if you dare to rebel. Or at the very least understand that we don’t understand. What is vital to recognise – if we are not to write off our fellow human beings (even ourselves) as monsters – is how peer pressure works. We are herd animals. Our very survival depends on our deeply ingrained instinct to conform. One definition of mental health is compliance with surrounding expectations. It is incredibly difficult to run against the herd... and not be trampled underfoot.
In 2012 I wrote about John Smyth’s abuse, without enough evidence to name him but with enough to arose the interest of the Police; also of a boy who later died, allegedly because of him. In the same article I mentioned another instance of alleged abuse, the supposed perpetrator also a charismatic leader in an extremely influential world. A week later he attempted to contact me. I still struggle to understand my reaction. I was sweating with fear: sick with it. Terrified all weekend. Why? I was the innocent one... Because of decades of conditioning, presumably. Part of me must have been rationally frightened of extreme peer disapproval and ostracism for blowing the whistle: part was, I suspect, an irrational response to an intensely powerful personality... which abusers tend to have.
The really critical question is whether such pressure continues. In a sense, the answer is of course: and will, in one form or another, as long as the human race does. Sadly though and more specifically, I still detect this same sense of hierarchy, this same abhorrence of rocking the boat, at work in the same circles. I have not, thank goodness, been witness to child abuse. But some years ago I attempted to draw attention to a case of completely different (also shocking) abuse going on in a large and influential Evangelical church. Over several years it proved impossible to get the ear of anyone in authority. Close and old friends in the congregation turned a blind eye and didn’t want to know. One influential member said drawing attention to it was “distracting from the Gospel.” A couple said they didn’t want to read evidence against the clergyman responsible because they "owed him such a lot.” Numerous people urged that the important thing was forgiveness. Eventually, on the advice of several outside the situation, I wrote to the then Archbishop of Canterbury and was fobbed off by a member of his staff. It is considered ungodly to challenge leadership put in place by God. Our present Archbishop is sure-footed, honest and brave. I trust and hope that inspired by him, my beloved Church will have courage to know that, however fearful it may feel, we must always walk in the light.
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