Victims of a barrister facing child abuse claims say the Archbishop of Canterbury failed to expose the scandal, as a Bishop said that he had also been assaulted.
An open letter to the Most Rev Justin Welby, endorsed by eight alleged victims of John Smyth QC, calls on the Archbishop, a former colleague of the barrister, to come clean about the extent of his knowledge of the abuse claims.
The development came as the Bishop of Guildford revealed that he was one of 22 young men abused by Mr Smyth, who is accused of savagely beating beatings boys he met at Christian holiday camps in the late Seventies.
The Right Rev Andrew Watson said: “The beating I endured in the infamous garden shed was violent, excruciating and shocking; but it was thankfully a one-off experience never to be repeated.”
Hampshire Police last week announced an investigation into the abuse claims, which were reported to senior figures in the Church in 1982, and police sources said eight men have come forward to say that they were attacked by the barrister.
The Archbishop, who worked as a dormitory officer on camps run the Iwerne Trust, which Mr Smyth chaired from 1974 to 1981, has insisted he was “completely unaware” of the claims against the part-time judge until a victim contacted police in 2013.
The Archbishop moved to Paris in 1978, when the beatings are said to have begun. But a report into the claims was carried out by Canon Mark Ruston, one of his close friends, and the letter labels the Archbishop an “observer” of the abuse, who “knew but never reported appropriately”.
It continues: “And here’s the difficulty about being an observer. You have to ask yourself: ‘I knew about John Smyth. I become aware about some of the things that this abuser did, I have “observed” them.
“Can I look myself in the mirror and honestly say that I did everything I could to report to the correct authority all the things that I knew?
“Did I give the people who might bring the abuser to justice every scrap of information that they might need?
“And, if I didn’t, then thinking very carefully about this - whose side have I been on, all this time? The side of the victims. Or the side of the abuser?’”
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Archbishop said she was “absolutely, unequivocally clear that the Archbishop of Canterbury did not know of any allegations of abuse by John Smyth when he was a dormitory officer at Iwerne camp in the late Seventies”.
She added: “Again, he was only made aware of allegations in 2013, when he was informed that the Police had been notified.”
Several hours after the Telegraph put the victims’ letter to the Most Rev Welby, the Church of England issued a statement from the Bishop of Guildford, in which he said: “I don't begin to believe that he knew anything of Smyth's violent activities until his office was informed in 2013.”
The author of the letter, who wrote a harrowing account of the abuse in yesterday’s Telegraph, said: “Readers will have to decide who to believe: the words of one paid-up bishop rushed out within hours of my letter being sent to the Archbishop’s office. Or my words, the reflections of a victim, shared and supported by other victims?”
In his statement, the Right Rev Watson said he had spoken to police about the abuse he suffered.
He said: “I have been in contact with the Hampshire police over the weekend, and as such it would not be appropriate to say much more at this time, except that my profoundest prayers are with all those affected by this, and my heartfelt desire is that lessons might be learnt so this never happens again.
“I am grateful to the Archbishop of Canterbury for his apology to survivors on behalf of the Church.”
Mr Smyth left Britain after the allegations were reported to the Iwerne Trust and Winchester College, where some of the boys were students, in 1982.
He founded a ministry in Zimbabwe in 1984, where he ran holiday camps that are also the subject of a series of abuse claims.