S Africa Church apologizes to putting children at risk
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa has apologized for failing to protect the public from the risk generated by a vast British child abuser who moved to South African in 2001.
Senior Barrister John Smith, who died in South Africa in the age of 77 in 2018, misused more than 100 children and youth in the UK and Zimbabwe in the 1970s and 1980s. He met many of them in Christian camps, which he held.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned after publishing an independent review in the case last year.
It was found that Shri Welby and other church leaders had formally reported Smith to police in UK and officers in South Africa in 2013.
Smith moved to Zimbabwe with his wife and four Winchester’s children in England in 1984, two years after a report, which was not made public at that time, expanded the physical abuse he found.
His 2001 step in South Africa came after examining his activities in Zimbabwe, whose conclusions were not widely transmitted.
A new investigation was launched last year by the Cape Town Thabo Makgoba’s Archbishop, while the cases of misconduct in South Africa were not “detected on records”, “there was a lot of risk that they could be”.
The independent report found that while the church had no prior warning of Smeth’s abuses until 2013, “Between 2013, the warning of that warning within the ACSA and the death of Smith in 2018 … “.
Smith died at his home in Cape Town immediately after the heart process. It was exactly a week after a request to be called back to Britain.
The latest investigation found, “We find that at that time protective measures within ACSA lived in Smith South Africa, reduced the serious risk of such conduct.”
It details Smith’s activities after his move in South Africa.
It says that Smith joined an Anglican community in Durban, where he once campaigned and was part of a team running confirmed classes that highlighted them to young children.
The report stated that the church leaders left the community “suddenly” at some point in 2003 or 2004 after facing Smith with information about their derogatory behavior.
The couple then moved to Cape Town and joined another Anglican community.
In August 2013, the “First Warning to Acsa” Y, Church- On-men. They will later return to an Anglican Church shortly before Smith’s death.
And while another bishop, Peter Lee had “informally heard” about the abuses before his arrival in South Africa in 1976, the report found that neither the pastor “to reach them about Smith” There were rimis to pass in duty “.
“But … (they) failed to inform the authorities in Church-on-Main what he had learned about Smith from Ellie’s letter.”
The report said that although there were no allegations of Smith that continued their derogatory behavior in South Africa “What … It is clear … Since 2001, the young members of ACSA are real of Smith in South Africa Risk was brought in contact with the serial Abuse UK and Zimbabwe “.
In a statement on Tuesday, Archbishop Macagoba accepted the church failure to protect its congregation and “broad community” from the possible misuse of Smith.
He also expanded several steps, which he presented in his next meeting to the leadership of the church to “apply as a case of urgency”.
