A report found Justin Welby took insufficient action into allegations against John Smyth, believed to be “the most prolific serial abuser” associated with the Church of England.
Welby said he became aware of the claims in 2013, a few months after he became the archbishop, the religious head of the Church of England and the spiritual leader to 85 million Anglicans worldwide.
Smyth “could and should” have been reported to the police in 2013, the report said, which may have led to an investigation and possible conviction. He died in 2018.
“When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow,” Welby wrote Tuesday. “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024.”
Smyth was a lawyer and evangelical Christian who held a leadership role in a charity that organized summer camps for young Christians in Britain. He also met young boys through talks he gave at universities and a private school.
He is alleged to have abused up to 30 boys in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. His victims say they were savagely beaten in his garden shed and that he used religious language to justify the beatings.
In the early 1980s, an internal investigation was conducted into the allegations and warned Winchester College, the private school that many of his victims attended. The allegations were not reported to the police at the time.
In 1984, he moved to Zimbabwe, and later to South Africa, where the report found that he is alleged to have abused an estimated 85 to 100 young boys.
