Archbishop’s QC friend ‘allowed to commit abuse after evangelicals failed to report him’

UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Patrick Foster
26 FEBRUARY 2017

A barrister at the centre of a child abuse scandal committed a series of sickening assaults against young men after leading evangelical groups failed to report him to the police, it is claimed.

John Smyth QC, a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is accused of carrying out sadomasochistic attacks on boys he met at Christian camps in Britain and Zimbabwe.

The assaults first came to light in 1982, when a victim attempted suicide after being summoned to a beating in the shed of Mr Smyth’s Winchester home.

But both the Iwerne Trust, the Christian group that Mr Smyth chaired, and Winchester College, the school attended by some of his alleged victims, did not report the claims to police.

The part-time judge then moved to Zimbabwe, where he founded a series of summer camps at which it is alleged he again abused young men.

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