The alleged cover-up of the Church of England’s abuse scandal is echoed in the handling of events at £55,000 per year private school in Croydon, where there was a Met Police investigation last year. By STEVEN DOWNES
Time to go: Archbishop Welby appointed seven of the Whitgift Foundation’s governors in Croydon
The Archbishops of Canterbury are inextricably linked, eternally linked in several cases, to Croydon. Six are buried at Croydon Minster, going back as far as 1583. Another five have their graves at St Mary’s in Addington. These archbishops’ former palaces, at Addington and in Old Town, remain in use to this day.
And yesterday’s resignation of Justin Welby, the 105th to have held the office as Archbishop of Canterbury, may yet have repercussions for Croydon.
For the Archbishop still has an influential role in the business of Croydon, through the Whitgift Foundation, the borough’s biggest landowners and operators of three (soon to be two) large fee-paying schools.
Welby personally appointed seven of the 12 members of the Court of Governors which oversees the 400-year-old Whitgift Foundation – named after one of his predecessors as Archbishop, a charity which has a £79million annual income, according to its latest accounts. Whoever replaces Welby as Archbishop will have it in their gift to make future appointments to the Whitgift Court of Governors.
Welby’s resignation came yesterday after mounting pressure because of his inadequate response to one of the church’s worst abuse scandals.
School for scandals: Whitgift School was subject to a police investigation last year
Yet when there were two sex scandals in 2022 at one of the schools run by the Whitgift Foundation, in which one teenaged pupil committed suicide and a former teacher took his own life, the Foundation said nothing publicly and appeared to do little despite serious concerns over safeguarding, or the lack of it.
Welby’s resignation followed the publication last week of a damning report on the Church of England’s cover-up of abuse by John Smyth in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and later in Zimbabwe and, it is suspected, South Africa.
About 130 boys are believed to have been victims of Smyth, who died in 2018.
The independent Makin Review concluded Smyth could have been brought to justice had the Archbishop formally reported it to police a decade ago.
Sorry statement: how the news of Welby’s resignation was issued yesterday
A petition started by three members of the General Synod had amassed more than 13,000 signatures calling for the Archbishop to quit.
Welby, the spiritual leader of 85million Anglicans worldwide, said: “Having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty the King, I have decided to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury.
“The Makin Review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth. When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.
“It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and re-traumatising period between 2013 and 2024.”
Andrew Graystone, the author of Bleeding for Jesus, a book about Smyth’s abuse, told The Guardian that the church needed “a wholesale change of culture at the top of the organisation”, with other clergy also taking responsibility for failing to act.
He said: “At least 11 bishops knew about John Smyth’s abuse, but failed to stop him. In addition there were literally scores of rank and file church leaders and members who stood by, feeling it was someone else’s job to act.
“This is not about the incompetence of one man. It is a deep-seated cultural issue about the privilege in the church.”
Smyth sadistically abused private schoolboys who attended evangelical Christian holiday camps in Dorset in the late 1970s and 1980s. When the abuse was discovered, Smyth was allowed to move abroad with the full knowledge of church officials.
He died aged 77 in Cape Town while under investigation by Hampshire police, and was “never brought to justice for the abuse”, the Makin Review said.
By Archbishop appointment: the Whitgift Foundation charity governors, seven of whom were appointed by Justin Welby. They include the charity’s chairman, Christopher Houlding
The safeguarding scandal at Whitgift School in 2022-2023 was unconnected to the Smyth crimes, but again only came to light after the school run by the church-connected charity sought to cover-up the serious criminal activities.
It took Whitgift School six months before it notified parents and carers that it had been subject to an investigation by the Metropolitan Police.
At least two Whitgift teachers left their jobs abruptly, one of them dismissed, after one was accused of having hacked into the school’s computer system in order to access contact details for former pupils.
The Metropolitan Police issued this statement to Inside Croydon: “On Wednesday, January 3 [2023] police received a third-party allegation of suspected online sexual communication with a child that was alleged to have taken place during December 2022.
“A police investigation was carried out and no offences were identified.
“The investigation was closed with no further action. However, should any further information be provided to officers, this will be assessed.”
Concerns had begun after images from an account that appeared to be connected to a teacher started to circulate on social media. As well as containing pictures of one member of staff in a state of undress, the posts made serious allegations about two other teachers at Whitgift.
It was claimed one was messaging former students “by getting their number off school systems” and sending them “very explicit content”. It suggested another was “adding students and ex-students on social media by ‘catfishing’ and trying to get inappropriate content”.
“Catfishing” is the practice of using someone else’s pictures to create a fake social media account.
It was reported that Whitgift conducted its own investigation into the wrongdoing, which a spokesperson for the school claimed had found “that what took place did not involve any pupils and the former pupil said to have been involved was an adult at the relevant times”.
Religious experience: Rt Rev Dr Rosemarie Mallett, Bishop of Croydon, at her consecration service alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2022
They said: “There was, therefore, no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing, albeit the behaviour fell below expected standards of a member of staff at the school.”
But former Whitgift teacher Dr Kevin Ralley, who had no direct involvement in the alleged misconduct, was dragged into the growing scandal, committing suicide as a direct consequence of being named in some of the tawdry digital messaging.
And in the midst of all this, in October 2022, 16-year-old Whitgift pupil Dinal De Alwis also took his own life, after being subjected to online threats and blackmailing over personal sexual content.
Annual fees at Whitgift School are now as high as £55,000 (for boarders) and £28,000 for day boys. The Whitgift Foundation and Whitgift School always denied that the resignation of Chris Ramsey, the Whitgift headmaster who stood down in July, was in any way connected with the abuse complaints and investigation.
But the apparent lack of action and transparency over these scandals begins to appear to be a systemic problem with organisations closely connected to the Church of England.
Croydon’s own Bishop, Rt Rev Dr Rosemarie Mallett, was belived to be attending a Southwark Diocese meeting today to discuss a formal reponse to the Makin Review, and the resignation of Justin Welby, and so was not immediately available to comment.
Another senior figure in the church in Croydon told Inside Croydon today, “There was a good case for Welby resigning as head of the institution which has failed, but though he could have been more active than just passing on a referral to the police, those who really need to take accountability are either dead, or hoping to ride this out.”
The source gave as one example Andrew Cornes, who is on the Crown Nominations Committee, so is among the small cabal that chooses the next archbishop. Cornes is named in the Makin Review as having failed to disclose decades ago. “So he, too, could have prevented many of the abuses,” the source said.
“A lot of the big voices and the three petition sponsors calling for Welby’s resignation have an axe to grind, or are just conservatives trying to stop any progress towards LGBT+ equality,” the source suggested.
“The Church of England is in a very precarious place indeed.”
Read more: Another Whitgift shock as second head teacher decides to quit
Read more: Former Whitgift teacher given 4-year sentence for child abuse
Read more: Hammer blow for Whitgift Centre with new delay to masterplan
Read more: Foundation abandoned new school plan after taking £70m loan
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