Why was sexual abuser John Smyth not exposed?

‘The late British Barrister John Smyth QC has been labelled as the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England – but because that abuse was covered up, he was able to leave his mark on some of South Africa's most far-reaching court cases. Smyth would become a self-described proponent of Christian values in the High Court, Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and Constitutional Court.’ News24 legal journalist Karyn Maughan adds in addition to unsuccessfully trying to oppose the Constitutional Court affirming the right to abortion on behalf of Doctors For Life, Smyth's Justice Alliance of SA (Jasa) was also one of multiple civil rights groups that successfully challenged then President Jacob Zuma's attempt to extend Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo's term for five years. However, an independent review has now found that Smyth abused more than 100 children and young men with horrendous beatings, which he reportedly sought to justify with accusations of sexual immorality and sinfulness. Writing on the News24 site, Maughan notes Jasa sought to challenge the Teddy Bear Clinic's ultimately successful efforts to decriminalise consensual sex between adolescents aged 12 and 15-years-old. The Constitutional Court's ruling on the issue records that ‘Jasa submits that allowing sexual penetration between children is not in the best interests of the child because children are unable to give informed consent’. ‘The freedom to engage in a prospectively perilous activity (such as sexual penetration) in circumstances where the capacity for informed consent is absent is not a freedom that the law should recognise,’ Justice Sisi Khampepe wrote in her assessment of Jasa's arguments, in the apex court's unanimous ruling. In subsequent submissions to Parliament on behalf of Jasa, Smyth proposed that, while adolescents should not be prosecuted for consensual sex, there should be some ‘deterrent to assist in controlling the 'material risks' of children having children’. ‘Some children want boundaries,’ Smyth reportedly stated. Maughan says Jasa's submissions are now arguably tainted by the awareness that Smyth's reported abuse frequently took the form of ‘ritualised beatings to 'repent' for sins such as masturbation.

Maughan notes Smyth also had tried and ultimately failed to stop the closure of four childcare centres in the Western Cape and the transfer of their children to other centres, including those for children in conflict with the law. He contended that orphans and children in need of care risk being ‘contaminated’ by child offenders awaiting sentencing and children awaiting trial if they were moved from their child-friendly environments to high-security, ‘prison-like’ facilities’. However, the SCA ruled that the facts on which Jasa based its case were incorrect. Evidence showed that children who needed care and children in conflict with the law were housed separately in these facilities. The court said: ‘It appears that in the Western Cape, there is a more fundamental separation than that required in terms of the Children's Act, in that the different categories of children in secure care are housed separately in the facilities in which secure care is provided, while children not in secure care are placed in separate facilities.’ Court papers reveal that Smyth had stated that it was difficult to see how the children could be kept separately. Maughan notes he did not appear to have produced any hard evidence that they were not.

While a documentary exposed Smyth's abuse in 2017, he was never brought to justice and died in Cape Town a year later. Maughan says the recently released independent review led by Keith Makin confirms that – despite Smyth's ‘appalling’ abuse in the UK having been identified in the 1980s – he was never fully exposed and was able to continue his abuse. He was encouraged to leave the country and moved to Zimbabwe without any referral being made to the police. From there, he went on to SA. The independent review noted during this time, church officers ‘knew of the abuse and failed to prevent further abuse’. ‘John Smyth should have been properly and effectively reported to the police in the UK and relevant authorities in SA. This represented a further missed opportunity to bring him to justice.’