by Julian Mann, Christian Today
It is to be hoped that a forthcoming Channel 4 documentary into the life and crimes of John Smyth will explore the elitist conservative evangelical sub-culture he exploited for his serial abuses.
Channel 4 News, in a superb investigation led by Cathy Newman in 2017, broke the story of Smyth’s savage beatings of boys and young men in the garden shed of his Winchester home. Announcing on June 18 the documentary to be produced by Passion Pictures, the broadcaster said:
“The documentary will explore the psychology of a prolific abuser and tell the inside story of John Smyth’s sinister world, through exclusive and intimate testimony from those close to him. It will reveal the devastating impact of Smyth’s actions through moving accounts from victims and survivors in the UK and abroad.”
In the 1970s and early 1980s Smyth groomed his victims at the Iwerne evangelical camps aiming at pupils from the ‘top 30’ English boarding schools. Until the inner circle of Church of England clergy behind the cover-up of his abuses expelled him in 1982, he was chairman of the charitable trust that ran the holiday camps held at a boarding school in the Dorset village of Iwerne Minster.
Read also: Welby tells students ‘Makin was wrong’ by Madeleine Davies, Church Times