Channel 4 News - Fri 3rd Feb

A Christian youth camp leader accused of brutally beating public schoolboys was later charged over the death of a boy in Africa, Channel 4 News has discovered.

John Smyth QC, an eminent lawyer known personally to the Archbishop of Canterbury, is accused of thrashing schoolboys until they bled while running evangelical summer camps in England between 1978 and 1982.

He was never prosecuted over the allegations, and went on to set up another Christian organisation in Zimbabwe.

In 1992, a 16-year-old boy who attended one of Smyth’s camps in the southern African country was found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Channel 4 News has learned Smyth was charged by local prosecutors with culpable homicide and the abuse of five other boys, but the case collapsed. He denies any involvement in the death, calling it an “unfortunate incident”.

The Church of England and the Christian charity that took over some of the functions of Smyth’s organisation are now facing questions about how they handled the original allegations of beating.