- 11 hours ago
See No Evil (2025) - Season 1 Episode 1
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00I've got some good memories of times with Dad.
00:06He was active and athletic,
00:09was often playing tennis and water skiing,
00:13a well-respected Christian minister.
00:16I would describe him as a brilliant man,
00:18not just in the way he spoke, but he was charming.
00:21He had a big smile and he was compelling.
00:25John Smythe and family were
00:28a rather lovely country house,
00:31a Volvo,
00:33a yacht,
00:35holidays in Sardinia in the summer,
00:40and skiing in the winter,
00:44and entertaining Lord and Lady So-and-So.
00:48That's the world that I remember.
00:52I did love my Dad as a small child,
00:56but I remember feeling he is an unsafe grown-up.
01:01It's very hard to verbalize, but watching him,
01:04I had this feeling there was something not right about Dad,
01:07something off, off with how he was.
01:12The effect of John Smythe's abuse has been devastating for so many people.
01:24Death, suicide attempts, mental health sections,
01:31and innumerable people needing psychiatric help.
01:35That's nearly 40 years after the abuse took place.
01:38The sort of thing that you don't want to talk about.
01:44I won't talk.
01:46I can't talk about the Shed.
01:50We're talking about my Dad here.
01:57We are, for the first time,
01:59properly confronting everything my father did.
02:03How on earth did he get away with everything for so long?
02:09Why didn't they take action?
02:13This is a story about hypocrisy, power, and control.
02:20There's a Christianity that's life-affirming and courageous,
02:24and there's a Christianity that is pultish, soul-destroying,
02:30fearful and destructive.
02:33And this story contains both of them.
02:38When I was 12, I moved to Winchester College.
03:03One, if not the oldest public school in England.
03:07Go to it with fresh courage, young man.
03:17This is the way to the stars.
03:20My father was chairman of the governing body of Winchester,
03:24and he'd been to the college himself, as his father had,
03:27so there was a strong lineage of Morses at Winchester.
03:32But I was a bit different.
03:36I liked, in fact, loved Andy Morse right from the first meeting.
03:43Mark was very funny.
03:45He was obsessed with dogs.
03:47I was very rebellious into alcohol big time.
03:50I think I was probably hard work for the teachers as well.
03:53Like, what do you want Stibby?
03:55It was like finding a brother to find someone like Mark.
03:59We liked all the same things.
04:00We liked sport. We liked films.
04:02We were particularly excited about Star Wars coming out.
04:05I can't shake it!
04:06Watching great Luke Skywalker, kicking a football around,
04:11pretending to be Norwich City players.
04:15We were taking our bathtubs out and sailing them down the river,
04:19drive a car around a straw field.
04:22I remember a friend of mine who was actually the son of a lord,
04:26saying that he thought that there might be drugs in hamster food.
04:30We smoked it and made ourselves extremely sick.
04:33All totally dangerous stuff.
04:36It was a sort of golden time.
04:42It was a lot of fun.
04:46But the early years, and in fact all the years, were tough,
04:51trying to come to terms with my homesickness.
04:54These are two pictures of me aged, I think, four or five.
04:59A very privileged upbringing, still living at home,
05:03not being sent away yet.
05:08I was seven years old when I was sent away to boarding school.
05:12I remember chasing my mother as she was trying to leave
05:16and clinging on to her, desperately asking her not to leave me.
05:24There was a Latin song that you had to sing called Domum,
05:33Dulci Domum, which meant home sweet home,
05:36which I always thought was ironic to just make life
05:39a little bit more homesick.
05:41I never lost that sense of homesickness.
05:47And I was definitely looking for something.
05:50I was beginning to have questions about
05:53what I was going to do in the future.
05:56In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
06:02In the 70s, Christianity became quite popular.
06:07Because it is so vibrant and you can feel something there.
06:12The Festival of Light drew something like 25,000
06:15from all over Britain to Trafalgar Square.
06:19There were a number of talks held at the school,
06:22given by evangelical Christian leaders.
06:25Evangelical Christianity is to do with the charismatic wing of the church.
06:30I found this very black and white message that was being preached particularly appealing.
06:39But also the talks, they were in the evening and it meant that you got out of homework.
06:43The call was put out, will you give your life to Jesus?
06:49So I stepped forward with my friends and I put my hand up.
06:58So I was not a religious guy at all.
07:00But Andy and I went to the Christian Forum together.
07:05Lord, make an instrument of thy peace.
07:10Those meetings were very inspiring for an orphan boy like me,
07:15who was looking for older male role models.
07:18In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
07:25The first time I saw John Smythe was at a Christian Forum meeting.
07:29He was the guest speaker.
07:31But what struck me was that he was younger than nearly all.
07:36The other speakers were engaging, very funny, a brilliant mind.
07:44He was this top, top barrister involved in court cases that made the press.
07:51And his knowledge of the Bible seemed to be immense.
07:55There was something seductive about John Smythe.
07:58Like a tractor beam, you felt charmed and privileged to be of interest to him.
08:06He would stand very close to you, almost in your face, and look into your eyes.
08:14And he always had this sort of half smile as well.
08:17So you weren't sure whether he was going to tell a joke.
08:21He was magnetic.
08:25He started to meet with us in very small groups, talking about the promise of our lives.
08:35John said he saw something in me.
08:38He thought that I might get a job in the law one day.
08:42And it was incredibly flattering.
08:45I felt very special.
08:47I felt loved.
08:49John Smythe became a father figure to me.
08:58I was drawn under his spell.
09:01Predators are good at discerning people who are vulnerable.
09:04It's like a pheromone.
09:05They can sense and pick it up.
09:07And I think he picked it up in me.
09:09I still feel as though I have and had a personal relationship with him.
09:17That endures to this day.
09:18He is still always with me.
09:27Not always as a comfort.
09:31He appears in my dreams.
09:38And it is normally the loving John.
09:45Then, of course, there is also the other side of John.
09:49It is harder to deal with.
10:08My name's Andrew Greystone.
10:11I have a background in journalism.
10:15Oh, it's cold.
10:18Do you want to chop the button?
10:21And from time to time, because I have a Christian faith,
10:24I've been called on by Christian organisations
10:26to help them with their communications.
10:30In the autumn of 2014,
10:31I was called by an organisation called the Titus Trust.
10:35It's a Christian organisation
10:38that runs summer camps.
10:39It's led by members of the Church of England.
10:43And I was asked to go and meet a representative
10:46in a strange, empty office building
10:49above a shop in central London.
10:54They said that a man called Graham had come to them
10:57with a disclosure of historic abuse.
11:01And they were nervous that this person
11:04was perhaps a bit unstable.
11:05And if this man went public,
11:08that it would damage the work of the kingdom of God.
11:11So they asked me if I would help them.
11:17I took this dossier of information
11:20and I read it on the train.
11:22As I turned the pages,
11:24I was more and more horrified.
11:25The file contained a report from 1982 that documented not just one allegation of abuse,
11:35but almost 20.
11:37The abuse perpetrated on these young men was really stomach-churning.
11:43And life-changing.
11:46I went back to a meeting of the Titus Trust.
11:52And I said to them,
11:54you need to get somebody in to investigate it from top to bottom.
11:58And there was a kind of silence in the room.
12:00And the message that I got from them was,
12:03well, we're certainly not going to do that.
12:05That's not what I asked you here at all.
12:08And so they sent me away.
12:11But I was left with this dossier.
12:15Sometimes you just have to think, what is my role here?
12:18This kind of knocked on the door of my life.
12:21I had to do something about it.
12:27I got a letter from a man I didn't know, Andrew Greystone,
12:35explaining he had something he thought I might be interested in.
12:40So I agreed to meet and he handed me a file.
12:45I read a few sentences thinking this is absolutely jaw-dropping.
12:49Allegations involving huge institutions at the heart of British society.
12:55This could be something of national importance.
13:04The report involved a man called John Smythe.
13:10I'd never heard of him before, but from the digging around that we did,
13:14I'd begun to build up a picture of how influential Smythe was.
13:20We discovered that John Smythe came to prominence in the 1970s
13:24as a moral campaigner for Christian values.
13:27What I think is an essential distinction, if we're to understand this bill at all,
13:33and that is controls which are necessary for the protection
13:38of the more susceptible members of society, such as our children.
13:41In 1977, Smythe represented Mary Whitehouse in the prosecution of a magazine called Gay News.
13:51It was a hugely anti-LGBT agenda.
13:54We prayed loud enough that the Holy Spirit would go into that jury room and guide a right.
14:04Clearly a man with Old Testament Christian morality.
14:08And the crucial thing for us was that he was still alive.
14:18So we had brought in Tom Stone to try and find the victims.
14:23Without them, we didn't really have a story.
14:26The first step was to contact Graham, the man who had come forward,
14:33forcing the Titus Trust to hire Andrew Greyston.
14:36Our hope was that he would lead us to other survivors.
14:39Now, by and large, you don't cold-call people about their abuse,
14:44but this is pretty high stakes.
14:47He picks up first time, says his name.
14:50He's very nervous. He's very jumpy.
14:53But by the end of the phone call, it becomes pretty clear
14:57he'd been waiting for three decades for someone to call him about this.
15:06Do you prefer to call yourself a victim or a survivor?
15:11I know this is very contentious. I remain a victim.
15:14I'm not sure I have or will ever come out the other side of this.
15:18In 2016, I got a phone call from Tom Stone.
15:25I trusted Tom immediately.
15:28And he is the one I chose to...
15:35He's the one I chose to speak to about this first.
15:39Part of my OCD has been keeping stacks of documents related to John Smythe.
15:55This is probably the most chilling.
15:58Smythe picked and chose from texts like this to justify what he...
16:07Oop.
16:09For what he did to us.
16:13What many of us need today is a burning examination by the Holy Spirit,
16:18which may be bitter to the taste.
16:21He has planned for you a personal Calvary, a personal Pentecost,
16:27where his blessings must be withheld until, like David,
16:30you prostrate yourself on your face before him.
16:33The psychiatrist I've seen has told me that my body to protect myself,
16:45my PTSD has stored much of this somewhere where I can't retrieve it.
16:51I hope it never does come back.
16:52So if I talk quite coldly about this, that's because...
16:58I don't... I... I... I... I... I... Sorry.
17:03I don't allow myself to get drawn into the emotion of it.
17:10I went away from that first meeting thinking this is very serious
17:15and this is not another job.
17:16Next, I need to try and find as many contemporaries of Graham who might be victims.
17:26So I drive to Winchester College where a lot of the victims were believed to have gone.
17:33Winchester College was built around excelling.
17:37We were told we were special.
17:40Grooms for academic success.
17:42It was almost failure if you didn't get into Oxbridge.
17:48Winchester College has its traditions.
17:50It has its own language called Winchester Notions.
17:53Lessons were up to books.
17:56A bicycle was a bogle.
17:58There were probably a thousand separate words.
18:04It's like Harry Potter. It really is.
18:07And I find that it has its own shock.
18:10And in that shop is a book.
18:14The Wickhamist Register.
18:16It details the name of every student that's ever been to the school.
18:21The book is really a route map which enabled us to work out who were the contemporaries of Graham.
18:27Who was in the same house.
18:29Who was the same age.
18:30And through that we would have a half decent chance of identifying who else might have been a victim of John Smythe.
18:39I start calling people travelling across the country.
18:43And then somebody puts me on to Andy Morse.
18:46And he is like nobody else in this investigation.
18:47I saw a very distinct path being laid out for me by John Smythe.
19:03There was a very strong sense of being guided.
19:09So at the Christian Forum meetings we were encouraged to sign up for a place called Ewan Minster.
19:16Which was a Christian holiday camp.
19:20That was run in the Easter and the summer holidays.
19:23I got a postcard from Ewan.
19:27That is Claysmore School where the camps were held.
19:31John sold it as fun and sport and a bit of Jesus.
19:37And in fact it was quite a lot of Jesus.
19:40We discovered that the Ewan camps movement was started in the 1930s by a clergyman called Nash who was universally called Bash.
19:54So they were sometimes called the Bash camps.
19:56Bash's idea was to gather young men from the top 30 public schools in England.
20:04It was highly exclusive, white, English and only the wealthiest were admitted.
20:12You know some people were sound which meant they believed all the right things.
20:17If you weren't sound you might be NQWWW.
20:20Not quite what we want.
20:22It was grossly misogynistic.
20:26There were women known formally as lady helpers, informally as bunnies.
20:30They had a uniform of Laura Ashley blouses and pearls.
20:36They were not allowed to talk to boys and they were there to do the earning and the washing up.
20:41We found ourselves investigating what was effectively a cult.
20:46John Smythe was the kingpin at these camps.
20:50He was chair of Ewan itself in the 1970s.
20:53Ewan and John Smythe promoted muscular Christianity.
21:00The essence of it was the church and culture has become too feminized.
21:08We need men to step up to the plate and be men.
21:12Sports the primary route for that along with Christianity.
21:16Put them together you've got muscular Christianity.
21:19That's what Ewan Minster sold.
21:21The real purpose of the Ewan camps was to groom these boys how to operate in the highest echelons of British society.
21:31The goal was to place them in politics, in the army, in business and the law and particularly in the Church of England.
21:41So they were deeply proud when Justin Welby, a Ewan man became Archbishop of Canterbury.
21:51The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England.
22:01Justin Welby is just about the most powerful religious figure in the UK.
22:06The peace of the Lord be always with you.
22:17The more we investigated, the more we realized what an influential character John Smythe was within the Church of England.
22:25He had this pivotal role training up the leaders of the future.
22:34And a lot of the victims we talked to said that they were desperate to please John Smythe.
22:40They were desperate to be invited to Sunday lunch at his house.
22:43I think I was 14 when John Smythe first invited me to his home.
22:53There were circles within circles.
22:58The Orchard House was the inner sanctum.
23:01Every Sunday he would choose three boys to go back with him.
23:14He used to cram kids into the back of the car, drive slightly too fast and it was tucked in a hollow right in the middle of the countryside.
23:22So we're going to Orchard House, which was my childhood home.
23:45That's my bedroom with the window open.
23:48My name is Peter John Jackson Smythe and I'm the only son of John Jackson Smythe.
24:02My dad would be appalled at me sitting here a few years ago.
24:07I couldn't even think, let alone say, a dishonoring thought or word about my dad without feeling wrecked with guilt.
24:21Dad made it an existential issue dishonoring him.
24:27It was like if you dishonor me, you are dishonoring God and you die young.
24:31Being back here is a blend of memories. I have some good memories of playing in the yard, my sisters.
24:42I've also got a bit of a sense of dread in me.
24:48The dark cloud of shame around our family name, it looms very large.
25:00My name's Fiona and I'm John Smythe's youngest daughter.
25:03We as his family understand that what happened in Winchester is nowhere near the full picture of dad and his abuse and his character and how that has done so much harm to so many people.
25:17Do you remember Orchard House at all?
25:22I mean, bits and pieces. I remember the garden quite well actually.
25:27We'd look out of the kitchen window to the slope of the lawn. Large tree with a rope swing.
25:35Orchard, apple trees, dropping beautiful fruit.
25:39The smell of cut grass.
25:41We had a really typically English garden. Roses and honeysuckle. Lots of colours.
25:50Look how sweet Caroline is.
25:52Yeah.
25:54There was an indoor swimming pool, but when I say indoor it just had a white canvas tent over it.
26:02It was a handy way to make friends.
26:04It was a place of laughter and warmth. And I remember entertaining these wonderful Winchester College boys.
26:14When you got there, his wife Anne had already cooked up an amazing meal. Roast chicken, all the trimmings. It was like manna from heaven, like holy food.
26:26And occasionally John would get out beers.
26:30Sundays were fun days. A packed dining room table with all these boys, many of whom I looked up to.
26:38John Swine's children were lovely. Very polite. Almost alarmingly polite.
26:45So it was a bit like having a small brother and sister.
26:49I would have superpowers and I would be able to wrestle these guys three, four times my size to the floor.
26:57We played games in the garden with his children. It was a break from the drudgery of school.
27:04They were kind to play along. I remember Andy.
27:08So that's me. Who's that?
27:12That's Andy Morse.
27:13These guys were clearly my father's favourites. They were such nice guys.
27:22It felt very good to be drawn into another family.
27:26It was a kind of home from home.
27:28They were some of the happiest days of my young life.
27:34I trusted him completely.
27:36I didn't just look up to my dad.
27:44I adored him.
27:46He was a force of nature.
27:48But I had, strangely, I didn't...
27:51I was apprehensive about being alone with him.
27:55I felt unsafe in a way that I couldn't put my finger on back then.
27:59My biggest memory of Orchard House was actually a feeling, which was fear.
28:10I hid a lot.
28:12I just thought I liked making dens.
28:14But looking back, I was hiding.
28:17I didn't want to be found.
28:19There was a big table on the landing and Fiona and I used to hide there.
28:24I tried not to be seen or heard by dad so that I was never doing anything that might poke the bear.
28:39Not long after my 60th birthday, John Smythe invited myself and a couple of friends into his study at his home.
28:47He said to us, you're sinning, you're continuing to sin.
28:55And he opened his Bible and he turned to the Old Testament, to the second book of Samuel.
29:01And he read this verse.
29:02I will be his father and he shall be my son.
29:09When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men.
29:20And he looked at the three of us and he said, are you willing to be beaten for your sins?
29:26And I can remember my stomach falling away and turning cold and feeling trapped.
29:35But because he gathered together, us together as a small group, it felt impossible to speak out against what he was suggesting.
29:47And so I went along with what he was saying.
29:50Sometimes boys would visit out to our house and I would say to mum, where's, where's dad?
30:02And she would say, oh, he's praying with a boy up in the shed.
30:07And I would accept that at face value.
30:09I arrived at the house.
30:19We prayed for about 10 to 20 minutes.
30:25And then we'd proceed through the house out into the garden.
30:30He put out a white flag in the ground, which was to let his family know not to come beyond the white flag.
30:37And we'd move into his shed.
30:42It smelled of wood and human sweat.
30:47It was a hellhole.
30:49And in the corner were a stack of canes.
30:54He asked me to undress.
30:57And he himself took his top off and just be wearing shorts and flip flops.
31:07And then there was a bench to lean over.
31:12And that was almost the very worst moment, the anticipation of the first stroke.
31:22The physical pain was intense.
31:41I cried out every time I was hit.
31:45I remember gripping the bench as hard as I could as a way of masking the pain of what was going on.
32:04I would call out and I would cry.
32:11He just exhorted me to keep going and to keep taking more.
32:16It became hellishly hot.
32:26And I could feel blood trickling down my legs.
32:30It was like I was in a horror film.
32:33The beating had been much more savage than I had anticipated.
32:46Afterwards, John put his arms around me and told me that he was proud of what I had done.
32:53And here was the complexity that a man who I had grown to love as a father figure had now turned into someone whose intentions I couldn't calculate.
33:09Like you, I could see no sense in that at all.
33:23So I suggested that the words in the home should be added.
33:27Because it seemed to me that you had to provide the authority charged with this task of sifting out the real nasty with some sort of yardstick.
33:35My dad, by all accounts, was a brilliant barrister.
33:44He was in the limelight.
33:46He was well respected.
33:48The youngest Queen's counsel in history.
33:55A huge crowd and a huge cheer.
34:00A wave that we've now become really quite well accustomed to throughout this campaign.
34:05People were drawn to dad and liked listening to him.
34:10There were photos around the house of him with Margaret Thatcher.
34:15He was incredibly articulate, very persuasive, a compelling speaker.
34:23And he had a strong sense of doing God's work.
34:28He would refer to it as the work.
34:31I started to go regularly to John Smyre's house for beatings.
34:39I actually used to write out a list of my sins.
34:45Impure thoughts, three strokes.
34:48If it was masturbation, five to ten strokes.
34:51He was particularly interested in whether I was masturbating.
34:56Are you keeping yourself holy?
34:59This seemed to be an obsession of his.
35:02I was aware that my other close friends were going through regular beatings.
35:07But we didn't talk about it because we were ashamed of them.
35:13Two victims to this day deny involvement.
35:17And that's shame.
35:20He stressed the importance of secrecy.
35:24That this was between us and God.
35:27But anyway, who was I going to tell?
35:32I couldn't burden my parents with everything.
35:36And I think I felt that John Smyre was more powerful than the police.
35:41Or the school.
35:46Some people say that this was nothing more than corporal punishment.
35:53But the beatings by John Smyre were diabolical.
35:58Extreme to a degree that no one could compare.
36:02We were supposed to be excelling in every area of our life.
36:05So we were supposed to be excelling in the beatings.
36:08All part of the masculine Christianity ethos.
36:17I could not believe the brutality of each stroke.
36:29And he was grunting with each and every blow.
36:33And I honestly thought, I'm going to die.
36:38This is so utterly appalling and excruciatingly painful.
36:46And I realised the only way I could get out of this was by pretending to faint.
36:51So that's what I did.
36:53Like an animal will play dead.
36:55In order to avoid being killed.
36:57He suddenly realised, okay, enough's enough.
36:59After a typical beating, John would apply some soothing lotion and grown adult nappies to try and stop the bleeding.
37:14The more I learnt, the more I felt how bizarre and cruel and completely dysfunctional this thing was.
37:29The very worst beating that we know about lasted 12 hours and it amounted to something like 800 lashes.
37:40It's unthinkable that one human being should treat another human being in that way.
37:46At the end of a beating, John would lay down the cane and he would come and he would sort of drape himself over my back.
38:00And he would nuzzle his head deep into my neck and he would sort of kiss me very gently.
38:14Lots of small sort of butterfly type kisses.
38:17And his face was wet with sweat.
38:24And his hands were clammy.
38:29And in my nightmares now, it's that draping that I sometimes feel and wake up to.
38:47I continue tracking down victims.
38:54I'm invited into some very impressive front rooms.
38:58But these men all share a very dark experience at the hands of John Smythe.
39:04The number of survivors we identified was growing and growing.
39:07As we investigated, we found Smythe was chairman of the Ewan Trust during the late 1970s.
39:20And Justin Welby, who went on to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, actually attended the camps as a young man in his twenties.
39:30At the same time as John Smythe.
39:31And it starts to beg the question, what exactly did the Archbishop of Canterbury know about John Smythe?
39:45The more people we spoke to, the more we wondered.
39:49Who knew what was happening inside the shed and who could have stopped him?
39:52Ann Smythe would emerge in little snippets of conversations with the young men.
40:02There were curious details.
40:04She would, for example, put down extra cushions on survivors' chairs that suggested she knew what was going on.
40:11Ann was the first adult that you saw.
40:14She always had the same expression on her face, one of sort of concern and, are you all right?
40:25As strange as it sounds, we would sit down for a family meal.
40:29Ann was there, ready to make me breakfast.
40:32She was behaving very strangely.
40:34She was being very friendly.
40:36Oh, how are you? You know, would you like some scrambled eggs?
40:39The conversation would be about normal, everyday things.
40:43But on more than one occasion, I stood up and there was blood on the chair.
40:48And I'd have to point it out to Ann.
40:51Nobody acknowledged that blood on the chair was anything unusual.
40:57One of the questions we were asking ourselves all along was,
41:02what role did John Smythe's wife, Ann, have in this?
41:05Was she complicit?
41:11Or was she another victim?
41:16It's funny to consider mum from an adult perspective.
41:22It would be interesting to hear from her what was going on in some of these moments.
41:26After a couple of years of being beaten, I moved from Winchester College to Norwich University.
41:39Most of the others were at Cambridge.
41:44And so that was a small escape.
41:46But I soon learned that despite the miles and miles of difference between Norwich and Winchester,
41:56things were going to continue very much as before.
42:01The beatings increased in intensity and in volume.
42:05Smythe built himself a second shed.
42:08A super shed.
42:10A super shed.
42:11Purpose made for beatings.
42:13Which he soundproofed.
42:15And Smythe got to a point where he had complete psychological control over the young people that he had chosen.
42:22John asked me whether I'd be a godparent to his youngest daughter Fiona.
42:31The christening ceremony was a little bit strange because I was younger than pretty much everyone.
42:38This is my christening.
42:41Because that's one of my godfathers, Andy Morse.
42:45This is an instance of dad leveraging you for his own ends to draw someone in.
42:52Yeah, exactly. Or keep them close.
42:54And he bestowed on these young godparents that honour.
43:01John Smythe was a manipulator.
43:04So much of what happened to us was about proving you were still part of the team.
43:10You were not disloyal.
43:12What was the reason that you kept going back?
43:16The reason that I kept going back was because I was still sinning
43:22and that I still wanted to be his disciple.
43:27But in January 1982, my mental health was really struggling.
43:34The anxiety was terrible.
43:37It was like a ticking clock.
43:40Ticking down to the next beating.
43:42And I only really achieved mental calm when I was being beaten, which sounds strange.
43:51But when I was being beaten, I was furthest away from the next time I was going to be beaten.
43:58And I was in an oasis.
44:00But my spirit dried up.
44:15Eventually, I had to tell John that I was struggling.
44:20I assumed his response might be to cancel the beating.
44:27But in fact, it turned out to be the worst beating that he gave me.
44:34And I could feel the anger in his strokes.
44:37I knew I couldn't keep going.
44:40And I say that because for my 21st birthday, John Smythe had told me that I needed a special beating.
44:57And I knew what that entailed.
45:01I was at my most tortured point in my whole life.
45:07I was losing my mind.
45:13And I could see no escape.
45:22I bought a box cutter and multiple bottles of aspirin.
45:30And I took them back to my university room.
45:34And I went to the toilet in my student digs.
45:40And I cut my hair off.
45:46I don't know why, but I did.
45:49And I made a very serious attempt on my life.
45:54And I fell down on the ground and waited to die.
46:10And it was a relief.
46:12It was a relief.
46:13It felt like a release from the world of John Smythe and the beatings.
46:26A call came in to me at Trinity College and it was Andy's father.
46:40And he told me that Andy was in hospital in Norwich and that he had tried to take his life.
46:46I remember waking up in hospital.
46:52My father and Mark came the next day and sat by my bed.
46:57And I sat by my bed.
47:02And I just sat there.
47:04So I think one of the hardest things for me is remembering Andy as he was before he met John Smythe.
47:23Really lovely, kind, vivacious, witty, full of life.
47:34And it was just horrific.
47:38Worse than anything you could imagine.
47:41This is my friend, you know.
47:44And just held his hand.
47:46We couldn't say anything.
47:49We knew what had happened.
47:51We knew why it had happened.
47:57It's like an awful, what the hell moment.
48:04How dare somebody behave like that towards another human being and especially someone I love.
48:10I felt calm.
48:14What I had done would bring an end to both my beatings but also the beatings for everyone.
48:23It was the end of it all.
48:26There was no way it could continue after that because this was like a bridge.
48:33This was like a bridge too far.
48:35There was no way Smythe could survive that.
48:37The powers that be in the UN culture are going to have to do something.
48:43Speaking to some of the victims, we discovered that suicide attempt raised the alarm.
49:02One of the boys went to a Cambridge vicar called Mark Ruston.
49:04He then investigated, he spoke to several of the victims.
49:09Mark Ruston was a UN attender and he took control.
49:15He told me that what had happened was wrong and it was over.
49:20Mark Ruston starts putting together accounts of what the boys say there's been happening with John Smythe.
49:25That will become the basis for what's known as the Ruston Report.
49:30And in that report Ruston referenced 22 victims.
49:34He sent this report to eight of the key leaders of the UN movement.
49:45And that's the very same report that was in the bundle that I was given by the Titus Trust.
49:52Because we discovered that in 1997, Ewan handed over its work to a new trust, the Titus Trust.
50:03Same methodology, same ethos, same camps and same people.
50:09Which feels like rebranding and cutting off links from the past.
50:14Here's a copy of the report.
50:19I was bleeding for three and a half weeks, said one man.
50:23A hundred strokes for masturbation.
50:26Eight young people receiving 14,000 strokes.
50:30It says the severity of the practice was horrific.
50:36They knew, these UN leaders knew.
50:43In 1982, at Orchard House, there was a mood shift.
50:49My father came to visit me at prep school.
50:52And he lay down on the bed and sobbed and said,
50:55I am sorry for being such a terrible father to you, Pete.
50:59I didn't know what he was talking about.
51:02I remember stroking his head and saying,
51:05Dad, you haven't. You're a wonderful father.
51:08And then there was mum and dad having dramatic conversations behind closed doors.
51:14I remember hearing dad wailing.
51:19So after Mark Ruston has completed his report, there's then a meeting.
51:25Held at a private members club in central London, the Carlton Club.
51:30At that meeting are key figures from the UN network,
51:34some of whom are also leaders in the Church of England.
51:38They discussed the grotesque, barbaric beatings.
51:43The men have to work out what to do about John Smythe.
51:46I was contacted by one of the leading officers at UN.
51:52He said he'd like to take me out to local Indian restaurant.
51:56We had an entertaining chat.
51:59And towards the end of the meal, he suddenly became quite serious.
52:05And he leant forward.
52:06And he said to me, Andy, I want you to know that John Smythe will be held to account for what he has done.
52:16We were in the playroom at Orchard House.
52:22And myself, my mum, my dad, my sister.
52:26And dad said, I've got something to tell you.
52:29But he said, the reputation of UN is sacrosanct.
52:37So let's keep this between ourselves.
52:42Dad said, God has called us, God has called us as missionaries.
52:47God has called me as a missionary to Zimbabwe.
52:50I found that understandable, even noble.
52:57As a 12-year-old boy, I was thinking, that sounds fun.
53:01So instead of going to the police, Smythe was encouraged to leave the country.
53:06Leaders within the UN camps and senior members of the Church of England,
53:11a church that is founded on the whole business of compassion and love,
53:15they thought that Wright's approach was to sweep it all under the carpet.
53:20They covered it up.
53:23And they said, we need to protect the work that God is doing through the UN movement.
53:28We need to protect our reputation.
53:31It shows an extraordinary commitment to protecting the institution of the Church of England.
53:38There must have been a concern that to deal with it, to put it all out in the open,
53:44would end up damaging this historic institution that's persisted for hundreds of years.
53:50The Church itself is more important, more powerful than any of these victims.
53:59And that's how it's always been.
54:02I assumed that I would at some point be asked by the police to give a testimony of my own experience as a victim.
54:15But that never happened.
54:16I continued going to the UN minster camps as if nothing had happened.
54:21I carried on seeing other victims.
54:25It became our dirty secret that no one talked about.
54:28One of the victims told me that John Smythe gathered together all beating paraphernalia and made a giant bonfire.
54:42I think it was destroying the evidence.
54:50It's extraordinary to think back now that this was such a missed opportunity to stop Smythe.
54:56It was quite clear what John Smythe was capable of.
55:01Leopards don't change their spots.
55:07You know, he could have been reported to the police, it could have been dealt with.
55:11His victims at that point could have got justice.
55:14But instead, he was allowed to continue for 35 years with fatal consequences.
55:24In Zimbabwe, Smythe started his own camping movement.
55:41And was out of control.
55:45You know, this is one of the darkest memories that I have of my life.
55:50I mean, the victims are calling for your resignation.
55:52I know.
55:55This is my Cathy Newman from Channel 4 News.
55:58Coming face to face with this man, I didn't see any self-doubt.
56:02Why did these young men have to bleed for Jesus?
56:05My mum never stood a chance that I've got some questions I'd love to ask her.
56:17Why have you decided to speak for the first time?
56:22I suppose there's a sort of protection.
56:25One's brain or memory blocks things out.
56:30Rather like being anaesthetised.
56:33But of course, all anaesthetic has to wear off and does wear off.
56:36And does wear off.
56:37And does wear off.
56:38And does wear off.
56:39And does wear those smart ones.
56:40And does wear off.
56:41I've got a sign.
56:42We've got two days left here.
56:43And does wear off.
56:46And has a sign.
56:49And does wear off.
56:50And does wear off.
56:52And does wear off.
56:55And we want to wear off.
57:26And the final part of the investigation into John Smythe is streaming now or watch here tomorrow night at 9 as See No Evil concludes.
Be the first to comment