It alarms me the way that cases like this always lead to a rush to judgement by people who clearly haven't read beyond the headlines. Some of the displays of bigotry at least show us who in our community would have been part of a pitchfork mob in a bygone age.Just to be clear this is a shocking case but the details are not new. Private Eye has been reporting on Smyth and the Iwerne camps and the flawed response of the church authorities to it for many years. Clearly there has been a massive failure in the way his activities were allowed to continue for decades but simplistic finger pointing isn't going to help anyone.These sort of cases are always extremely sensitive and complicated and it is very easy to judge harshly the people who were having to make decisions relating to them.There doesn't seem to have been any concerted attempt to cover up Smyth's activities. He was reported to the police five times by members of the church authorities. The distinction being made that these weren't formal reports is a nonsense. The police or CPS are obliged to investigate any crime they were made aware of.Smyth's crimes in the UK mainly occurred in the last century when a view prevailed that it could be more harmful to a victim of abuse to go through the ordeal of a trial. Survivors of Smyth may feel this was an error and they are probably right as we have more understanding now of the pathology of abusers and the high chance of them being repeat offenders. However, right up to the nineties it was standard operating practice not just in the church but also in schools, council care homes, the scouting movement and virtually every organisation with the care of children not to bring all cases of abuse to trial. It may be claimed that the CofE obliged victims to be quiet about what was happening to protect its reputation but this is clearly false. The victims in England went to schools such as Winchester and Eton and would have had families who has agency in the matter. It has to be assumed that they could have chosen a different response if they wished.It can't be denied that Welby's personal involvement in this complicates the matter. As a schoolboy he may have heard stories of Smyth's activities. In an age where corporal punishment was considered a legitimate form of chastisement, many who were subject to it grew to hate their teachers and lurid stories of abuse were shared outside the classroom only a portion of which were likely to be true. If Welby was ever told about Smyth it may have been among a host of similar reports which made him doubt them all. Only he would know the truth.There can be no doubt that Smyth's victims were failed but, whereas some individuals could have acted more effectively, the overarching problem was the way cases like this were handled in all institutions. We may congratulate ourselves that we are better at dealing with this problem now, and we probably are, but it is almost inevitable that scandals will emerge in which children were found to be subject to abuse right now. There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about children in care for instance.A witch hunt against people who decades ago made bad choices when faced with extremely difficult decision operates off the very dangerous assumption that these problems are behind us.
Jeremy Parkinson ● 9d