“The buck stops with me,” Makgoba said in his statement. “I accept the Panel’s findings unreservedly. I acknowledge that during Smyth’s time in Cape Town, God’s people were exposed to the potential of his abuse and I and the Diocese apologize to our congregants and the wider community that we did not protect people from that risk.”
The archbishop pledged to make reform of the church’s safeguarding process a priority during the remaining two years of his tenure.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned last November in response to criticism of his own response to complaints about Smyth, whom the BBC calls “the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England.”
Makgoba reported the findings of a Panel of Inquiry that he appointed in November. The panel was charged to investigate the Diocese of Cape Town’s actions after it received a letter of warning from the Church of England in August 2013, and to “make recommendations on the church’s safeguarding process.”
Smyth fled to South Africa in 2001, after being confronted about abuse at a Christian camp in Zimbabwe, where he was a volunteer. Between 2001 and 2014, he was a member of Anglican churches in Durban and Cape Town, serving as a confirmation class teacher in one of them.
While no evidence of abuse by Smyth in these settings has surfaced, the panel said there was “a very high risk” of this, and that “protective measures in place within [the Anglican Church of Southern Africa] at the time Smyth lived in South Africa inadequately mitigated the serious risk of such conduct being repeated here by Smyth, or others.”
The panel also criticized the church for failing to pass on the information it received to Church-on-Main, an independent evangelical congregation in Cape Town, where Smyth began worshiping in 2014.
The elders of the congregation excommunicated Smyth after reports of his abuse surfaced in 2017, and he had returned to an Anglican church by the time of his death.
The report states that Smyth and his wife became members of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, an Anglican church in Durban in 2003 or 2004.
At St. Martin, Smyth was a lay preacher, as well as member of a team that taught confirmation classes, and he arranged at least one confirmation camp.
When St. Martin’s rector, the Rev. Michael Skevington, received a call describing abuse by Smyth in the U.K. and Zimbabwe, he and a churchwarden confronted Symth and suspended him and his wife from all ministries at St. Martin.
From 2005 to 2013, the Smyths were part of another St. Martin’s Anglican Church, in Bergvliet, a Cape Town suburb. He preached occasionally there, helped with the Alpha course, and was part of a ministry to students at the University of Cape Town. The rector, the Rev. Allan Smith, said that Smyth did not “counsel or disciple young people” while there.
Smith was informed by his bishop, the Rt. Rev. Garth Councell of Table Bay, suffragan of Cape Town diocese, about the notice that the diocese had received from the Diocese of Ely in August 2013.
In December 2013, Smith informed Councell that Smyth, “about whom you had concern,” had informed him that he and his wife were leaving St. Martin’s for Church-on-Main, and said that this “may be of some relief.”
The panel concluded that Councell was not remiss in passing on the warning about Smyth he had received, but that he and Smith “erred in failing to inform the authorities at Church-on-Main,” where Smyth had a significant counseling ministry with young men for several years.
Smyth and his wife asked permission from Smith to return to St. Martin’s as “quiet members” after their excommunication by the elders at Church-on-Main in 2017. He permitted this, while insisting that they could not be involved in any ministry.
Smith conducted Smyth’s funeral about six months later.
Councell and Smith have both since retired.
The report also notes that there have been serious delays in implementing the safeguarding system that the Anglican Church in Southern Africa adopted in 2016.
Several areas for action were highlighted, including a need to clarify that safe church policies apply to church-owned and related schools and children’s homes, making clergy obligatory reporters of abuse, and improving communication about safe church principles and access to the system.
Makgoba outlined several areas for immediate action by the church’s bishops at their next synod.
These include requiring each parish to designate a safeguarding officer, and expanding safeguarding training opportunities. Each bishop will be asked to review whether anyone holding a license for ministry has been accused of abuse, and each parish will be charged to make a confidential report about any current or former members about whom they have “concerns of abuse or conduct which potentially contravenes the Pastoral Standards.”
“We cannot allow ourselves to be defined by this major setback,” Makgoba said. “We need to repent, then move forward, defined by hope and compelled by our faith to take action to root out abuse.
“I have two years to serve before my retirement. I cannot bequeath the current state of safeguarding to my successor. One of my priorities before retirement has been to help to change our church by ensuring that people of all sexual orientations are equally welcomed and ministered to by the church. I now have another, to act on the recommendations of the Inquiry Panel, all of which I accept, and to ensure they are implemented.”