{"id":140345,"date":"2025-10-08T17:28:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=140345"},"modified":"2025-10-08T18:40:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:40:00","slug":"church-times-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=140345","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) Zimbabweans\u2019 lawyers write to Cambridge church over John Smyth \u2018cover-up\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A letter of legal claim has been sent to St Andrew the Great, Cambridge (formerly the Round Church), on behalf of seven&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/zimbabwe\">Zimbabwean<\/a>&nbsp;victims of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/john-smyth\">John Smyth<\/a>. It alleges that senior clergy and church officers \u201corchestrated a cover-up that enabled Smyth to continue&nbsp;<a>abusing<\/a>&nbsp;boys for decades\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The letter, sent by Leigh Day Solicitors, argues that the failure to report Smyth\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/child-abuse\">abuse<\/a>&nbsp;in the UK between 1982 and 1984 \u201cdirectly led to his relocation to Zimbabwe, where he continued to prey on vulnerable boys\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The claimants are six men who say that they were abused as teenagers at Christian holiday camps run by Smyth in Zimbabwe, and the mother of Guide Nyachuru, a 16-year-old boy whose body was found in a swimming pool at one of Smyth\u2019s camps in 1992. The abuse included forced nudity, beatings with table tennis and jokari bats, indecent exposure, groping, and intrusive conversations about masturbation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Smyth, described in a review by Keith Makin last year as \u201carguably, the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2024\/8-november\/news\/uk\/prolific-brutal-and-horrific-makin-report-calls-out-the-smyth-abuse-and-the-cover-up\">News, 8 November 2024)<\/a>, moved to Zimbabwe in August 1984 and began to run holiday camps in the country. The move followed the completion in 1982 of a report by the Revd Mark Ruston, then Vicar of the Round Church, commissioned after a British Smyth victim grew so fearful of beatings that he tried to take his own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2025\/10-october\/news\/uk\/zimbabweans-lawyers-write-to-cambridge-church-over-smyth-cover-up\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Letter alleges that senior clergy and church officers \u2018orchestrated a cover-up that enabled Smyth to continue abusing boys for decades\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yqWhzbyyjl\">https:\/\/t.co\/yqWhzbyyjl<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Church Times (@ChurchTimes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChurchTimes\/status\/1975515174187446467?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 7, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote> <script><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A letter of legal claim has been sent to St Andrew the Great, Cambridge (formerly the Round Church), on behalf of seven&nbsp;Zimbabwean&nbsp;victims of&nbsp;John Smyth. It alleges that senior clergy and church officers \u201corchestrated a cover-up that enabled Smyth to continue&nbsp;abusing&nbsp;boys<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=140345\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[324,168,435,184,110,124,526],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-of-england","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-ministry-of-the-ordained","category-parish-ministry","category-teens-youth","category-violence","category-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140345"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140350,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140345\/revisions\/140350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}