The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby, has resigned in the wake of increasing public anger about the way in which the leader of the Anglican Communion failed to handle a safeguarding crisis produced by an evangelical layman, John Smyth, who beat young boys (in the purported context of giving them spiritual direction) until they bled.
About 130 boys and adolescents were thrashed, in Smyth's soundproof shed, in the context of an Evangelical summer camp that drew boys from the UK's leading public school. Archbishop Welby's office, it emerged in the course of an investigation carried out by Keith Makin, was directly responsible for a lack of interest. Delayed again and again, it therefore took 10 years for the truth to come into the light, during which time Smyth, the perpetrator of the abuse, died.
