A NEWS report that said that survivors of John Smyth’s abuse would not be eligible for redress payments from the Church of England has been described as “misleading” by the Archbishop of York.
A report on Channel 4 News on Thursday evening said: “We understand that, while victims have received an apology, they won’t qualify for financial compensation.”
A member of the Archbishops’ Council, the Revd Dr Ian Paul, had told the programme: “One of the things that’s a bit strange about this is that this is not abuse that happened in the Church of England. John Smyth had connections with the Church of England, but the abuse happened primarily in connection with Winchester, with a school there, and in his own home. So this is not a question about abuse that’s happened in the Church of England.”
Asked whether Smyth’s victims would be able to access the Church of England’s redress scheme, Dr Paul said: “The reason it’s impossible to say blanketly, ‘anyone affected by Smyth will receive funds from this’, is we don’t know what their connections with the Church of England are. The abuse did not happen in the Church of England, but people may have connections with or reason from the Church of England why they’re going to be eligible for that.”
A survivor of Smyth’s abuse, Mark Stibbe, told the programme that victims were “up in arms” about the possibility that they might not receive compensation from the Church of England.
A spokesperson for Church House said on Thursday, however, that Channel 4 had “reported incorrectly that victims of John Smyth ‘won’t receive financial compensation’ from the Church of England’s redress scheme.
“The redress scheme will be run independently of the Church, and it is therefore not for the Church to determine who will and will not receive redress. That does not mean that John Smyth’s victims will not receive redress.”
In a statement issued on Friday on behalf of the Archbishops’ Council, Archbishop Cottrell said that the Channel 4 News report had “contained inaccuracies and misleading information”, which had “caused distress to survivors”.
He continued: “It is important to clarify that, when the scheme opens, it will operate wholly independently from the Church. . .
“The scheme will carefully consider the unique lived experience of everyone affected by Church-related abuse to ensure that every application is treated fairly and consistently, by trained professionals. Last night’s media report gave a misleading impression of those who may or may not be eligible.”
The National Redress Scheme will be able to make awards of up to £660,000 for victims of physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, financial, or spiritual abuse, or neglect (News, 25 April).
The scheme is not yet operational, but legislation to bring it into action completed its revision stage at the July meeting of the General Synod (News, 12 July). It will need to receive final approval at the February meeting of the Synod, and be approved by Parliament, before it launches.
The Measure lays out conditions to qualify for the scheme. It requires that the abuser be someone who “had authority to perform a role in the Church of England”, or whose victim “had reasonable grounds to believe” that they had such authority.
Furthermore, there needs to be a “a close connection between activities authorised for performing that role and carrying out the abuse”.
The Makin review says that Smyth was a Reader in the Church of England, and that this gave him “a formal position as a Church Officer in the Church of England”.
Although he was not explicitly acting in a capacity as a Reader at the Iwerne camps, which were run by the Scripture Union, or at Winchester College, where he groomed many of his victims, Mr Makin suggests that this status was instrumental to his campaign of abuse.
“His association with the Church was, therefore, strong,” his report says. “It added to his credibility in the eyes of those he had dealings with, including Winchester College, officers within the diocese and, importantly, with the boys and young men he was grooming and abusing.”
A member of the group of survivors involved in formulating the redress scheme, Jane Chevous, has criticised Dr Paul’s comments, and drawn attention to the conditions set out in the redress measure. “The last thing victims need right now is additional unnecessary distress from inaccurate information,” she said.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, Dr Paul defended his stance: “It’s not about being legalist, it’s about being appropriate in terms of the boundaries of our responsibility. We cannot feasibly compensate anyone who experiences abuse in any context.”
The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, who chairs the Redress Project Board, was asked in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph about Smyth’s status in the C of E. He said that Smyth had “apparent respectability, not just in Church terms, but socially”.
The Bishop questioned, however, whether Mr Smyth was actually a Reader, saying that his diocese had no record of him holding that office. “We have no record of him in the diocese ever being formally admitted as a lay Reader. If he was functioning as such unchallenged, that is a serious concern for us.”