Victims of the Church of England’s most prolific serial abuser John Smyth have issued a scathing attack on the church, criticising its hierarchy of "actively persecuting" them.

In a statement shortly after the findings of an independent review into the case were made public, a number of victims and survivors said they were "utterly dismayed by the behaviour of the CofE hierarchy… which retains to this day a deeply ingrained culture of deference, cover-up and groupthink". 

They claim the culture allowed abusers to "flourish". 

Smyth, who was a prominent barrister and QC, was accused of attacking boys who he had met at Christian summer camps in Dorset during the 1970s and 1980s. He died in 2018 before he could be brought to justice.

The report, by independent reviewer and social services director Keith Makin, said many senior bishops and clergy had been told about the abuse in the 1980s but did nothing about it.

Smyth left the country and moved to South Africa and Zimbabwe without any referral being made to the police.

In Zimbabwe, he was charged with the manslaughter of a 16-year-old boy who was attending one of his summer camps. He was not convicted of the offence.

Survivors say that in trying to get justice, they have been let down by the church’s current treatment of them and also by the disbanding of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) in 2023:

"The Church Hierarchy have actively persecuted us, particularly since 2017 and continue to do so in 2024," they said.

"We continue to be lied to in 2024, and numerous promises made to us continue to be broken. All of this has been from the C of E hierarchy, including the most senior Bishops and administrators in the C of E in 2024." 

The group added that they were also concerned that the Church hierarchy still has no understanding of a "trauma-informed approach" when responding to survivors and engages with them by "utterly inappropriate means".

The statement criticised church leaders as seeking to characterise John Smyth as a "lone wolf", while "he is part of a long and ongoing tradition of abusers, many of whom have targeted the C of E as a soft touch particularly because of the historic and current lax treatment of abusers". 

And in a direct challenge to the Church, the survivors said they would be prepared to give evidence under oath to dispute what they call false claims, which they said had been "used by decades to justify blocking any proper investigation". 

The survivors are also highly critical of the Archbishop of Canterbury Most Rev Justin Welby who yesterday admitted "personally failing" in his response to the case. He was told about the abuse in 2013, but it was never properly investigated and John Smyth continued living in South Africa. 

The statement from victims and survivors added:

"Throughout the last eight years in particular we have continually regretted that the Church has shown so little concern for or interest in John Smyth’s victims in Africa, who constitute not only the vast numerical majority of his victims, but all of whom were believed to be under-age.

"Apparently unlike the Church of England hierarchy, we believe that God shows no partiality and that His concern depends neither on the colour of a person’s skin nor the continent they live in."

Andrew Graystone who has been supporting survivors for many years and whose own investigation into the case featured in the Makin Review, told Premier:

“It's shocking at several levels. The report confirms that Smyth’s abuse was prolific, brutal and horrific. But if anything could be more shocking than that, it is the number of people, senior people within the Church of England, who have known about this abuse for many, many years and yet failed to act in a way that stopped John Smyth.

"So the big question is, who is going to take some responsibility for their failure to stop him? Why did the archbishop and the other leaders of the church not say, 'stop'?" 

Yesterday, Archbishop Welby said he had considered resigning over the case.

Andrew Graystone added:

“The Archbishop says that in this case, the church was guilty of wickedness, concealment and abuse. But if you ask the archbishop, what's going to be done about it, he says, ‘Oh, well, that was all in the past. We do things very differently now'. 

"But the truth of it is that every day of every week, I hear from people who have been harmed in the life of the church and the church has mismanaged their abuse in the last three or four years. This is not something that can be consigned to history as a shameful thing about the church's distant past. This is a systemic problem in the church, and it has to be fixed.”

While welcoming the report’s recommendations, the group said they had little confidence that the Church would take notice and implement them.

They have called for the Church to produce a follow-up report in 18 months’ time based on any future evidence.