Background Archbishop facing tough questions on John Smyth

Calls for the archbishop of Canterbury to resign over "failures and omissions" regarding the sadistic abuser John Smyth have not come out of the blue.

- Harriet Sherwood

Justin Welby was notified of allegations of Smyth's abuse 11 years ago. Channel 4 News brought them to public attention seven years ago, and last week's independent review of the way the church handled the allegations has been more than five years in the making.

Smyth groomed schoolboys who attended evangelical Christian summer camps in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The review, led by Keith Makin, said Smyth, who died in 2018, had subjected his victims to "traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks". Some victims have tried to kill themselves.

A 1982 investigation secretly carried out by the Iwerne Trust, which funded the holiday camps, was covered up. Winchester college, the public school attended by many of the victims, banned Smyth from its premises but did not report his crimes to the police.