A new documentary on the Church of England’s most prolific abuser John Smyth includes exclusive interviews with his three children and the wife who stood by him til the end. It’s a harrowing tale of a psychopathic patriarch whose family lived in fear of him, says Tim Wyatt. But was his wife a victim - or should she have done more to stop him?
In some ways, the story of John Smyth - dubbed the CofE’s most prolific offender - is now so well known that a two-hour expose feels a little excessive. The tale of the evangelical barrister who was viciously beating young men in his garden shed first hit the headlines back in 2017, when Channel 4 News broke the story. Years of drip-drip revelations later, an exhaustive report by the Church of England was published in 2024 - and eventually led to the resignation of then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Now, Channel 4 has returned to the Smyth saga with See No Evil, a two-part documentary which treads this sordid ground once more.
Smyth was a high-flying lawyer and QC who became an influential volunteer leader at the Iwerne conservative evangelical summer camps. But he was also grooming young men, mostly those he met while involved with nearby Winchester College’s Christian group. He would summon them to a shed at the bottom of his leafy Hampshire garden and brutally cane them until they bled. This was necessary, he told them, to purge them of their sins.
Dozens of boys had their lives ruined by these sadistic semi-naked canings. When one victim attempted to kill himself in 1982, the Iwerne leadership finally found out about Smyth’s violent abuse, but rather than reporting him to the CofE and the police, they quietly ushered him out of the country to Zimbabwe. There he began his own Iwerne-style camps, and the beatings resumed. Tragically, one boy died in mysterious circumstances on the camps - yet Smyth still evaded accountability, relocating to South Africa where he lived in comfort and acclaim until finally exposed in 2017.
To watch this deeply distressing story is harrowing, even for those who are familiar with the outline. Survivors tell their stories candidly, outlining the horror of that garden shed and the devastating legacy it left on their shattered lives. “I could not believe the brutality of each stroke,” Mark Stibbe, one of the victims says. “He was grunting. I honestly thought I was going to die.” Another, Andy Morse, recounts how he still has nightmares of a sweating, half-naked Smyth draping himself over Morse’s terrified and bleeding body at the end of a beating, kissing him and whispering how proud he was of him.
Family in fear
But the real value of See No Evil is how it expands the Smyth story. For years, this has been mostly understood as an institutional scandal, an indictment of evangelicalism and Anglicanism. But it is also the story of a family living in fear of its narcissistic, psychopathic patriarch. While the impact of Smyth’s abuse on his own family was less newsworthy than the eventual resignation of an archbishop, it was no less destructive.
All three of his children and his wife Anne took part in See No Evil, speaking for the first time about how Smyth dominated and controlled his own inner circle, ruling with an iron rod and instilling fear in his children. Peter John (PJ), his oldest child and only son, is vulnerable and raw as he reflects on the strange cocktail of adulation and unease he felt about his father as a child. While reading from some of the Winchester College victims, Peter John is suddenly transported back to repressed memories of his own savage beatings, which began when he was just seven, in that same garden shed.
The family tentatively broach the impossible question: Why did their mother not stop their father?
His younger sisters, Fiona and Caroline, who were in primary school when the family suddenly relocated to Zimbabwe, paint a picture of a father who was feared more than loved. A hyper-masculine Christian patriarch who was utterly dismissive of his daughters and yet also demanded absolute loyalty.
As well as covering up what was happening at the camps, the Iwerne leaders who discovered Smyth’s abuse in 1982 were also seemingly unconcerned about what he might do to his own children. “Why did no-one think: If he’s doing that in the shed, isn’t there likely some kind of dysfunction going on in the family home?” asks Peter John.
All three children also ask hard questions of their mother Anne, who stood by her husband even after his crimes were exposed in 2017. Smyth’s victims talk about how Anne would mutely dress their wounds after returning from the shed without comment, before serving up a traditional Sunday roast as if these teenagers were not visibly bleeding into her chair cushions. “I feel real compassion for Mum, but I’ve got some questions I’d love to ask her,” Peter John says. “Why didn’t you say more, or do more? Where were you?”
The first victim?
Interviewed on camera for the first time, Anne says she was overawed and dominated by her oppressive and mercurial husband. She met him aged just 16 and then spent the next 60 years of her life living in his shadow. She likens the experience to being anaesthetised to the horrors that were going on but, after his death from a heart attack in 2018 (before he could be brought back to the UK to face justice), gradually coming back to herself again.
In the second episode, the documentary shifts between telling the less well-known story of Smyth’s continuing abuse on new summer camps he started in Zimbabwe, and the lingering family dysfunction. The use of family videos and photos gives See No Evil a curiously haunting atmosphere. Grave music and harrowing testimony from Smyth’s victims is overlayed with faded film footage of the barrister in sunglasses and shorts, larking about on the beach or diving into a swimming pool.
Why did no-one think: If he’s doing that in the shed, isn’t there likely some kind of dysfunction going on in the family home?
The culmination is a reconciliation between Peter John, Fiona, Caroline and Anne. Sitting on sofas, the family tentatively broach the impossible question: Why did their mother not stop their father? Anne wrestles with her culpability: “Although I knew about this and didn’t approve, I struggled to know what to do about that. My faith had taught me you had to focus on the good. I was married to him, and I knew I had to love the man. Just keep going, don’t dwell on the things that were so awful. But it was a very hard task. I hated what he was doing.”
She goes on to speak about the relief she felt when her husband died and the true horror of what he did become clearer. It is difficult not to be impressed with the children as they generously reflect on the situation Anne found herself in and characterise their mother as Smyth’s “first victim”.
In bringing the sordid tale to a close, Anne is asked what she would say to those still hurting men her husband once victimised – and she apologises for not being strong enough to stand up to him. One victim, Mark Stibbe, insists that he does not blame her and graciously offers the hand of forgiveness back to her.
