Top legal minds to probe church abuse scandal

South African Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba has appointed a three-person panel, including retired Judge Ian Farlam, to review how the Anglican Church handled abuse warnings about John Smyth. The disgraced cleric lived in SA after sex abuse allegations in the UK and Zimbabwe. News24 reports that the panel will assess the church's actions and recommend measures to protect congregants from abuse, with no local cases flagged yet. Makgoba has brought in some of the country's top legal minds to review the way the Anglican Church in SA handled warnings it received about the former UK barrister and church member. ‘They will carry out a retrospective analysis of our handling of reports received by the church, including a letter from the Diocese of Ely in 2013, reporting a historical case of abuse in Britain in 1981-82, a suspected case in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, and alerting us that Smyth was living in Cape Town,’ Makhoba said in a statement. ‘They will make recommendations to me as to further action,’ the archbishop said in a statement released by his office on Saturday.

The team includes Farlam, international lawyer Jeremy Gauntlett KC SC, and struggle activist, medical doctor and accomplished academic Mamphela Ramphele. An independent review into the Church of England's handling of allegations of abuse against Smyth found it had covered up transgressions in the UK and Zimbabwe in the 1980s and 1990s. News24 reports that Smyth left the UK for Zimbabwe in July 1984, then moved to SA in August 2001. He first lived in Durban and then in Cape Town before he died in August 2018. The review also found it was ‘highly likely’ that Smyth continued his crimes in SA and that there was ‘some evidence’ of him grooming and potentially abusing young men between 2012 and 2016.