Rebecca Chapman speaks to Andrew Graystone, who has been instrumental in exposing the scandal around abuser John Smyth.
Graystone is the author of Bleeding for Jesus, detailing the story of what went on, and was also involved in Channel 4’s exposés of what happened. A review of the book’s second edition, which has just been published, can be read on en's website here.
Please be aware the following content relates to crimes of abuse and could be both upsetting and triggering.
RC: You’ve worked in and with the media for decades – how did your career in media begin?
AG: I was coming to the end of working for Scripture Union, and before that, I’d worked for a number of churches. We were very committed to where we were living, so I was looking for something that would allow us to stay. A job at the BBC came through. I didn’t know anything about television – I didn’t even have a television! But I was then making religious programmes for a number of years, mostly for TV.
RC: Your more recent work has been around the new edition of your book Bleeding for Jesus, on John Smyth, a prolific abuser. How did you first get involved with all of this?
AG: I found myself being asked to offer help with communications for a number of churches and Christian charities. In 2014 Scripture Union put me in touch with The Titus Trust, who said that they had received an allegation of historic abuse at the Iwerne camps, work that they had taken over.
They told me about this allegation of abuse and they handed over quite a dossier of information. I went away, and I did my homework on that. I then went back to The Titus Trust and said: “I think this is a much bigger problem. The abuse is much more widespread than you either know about or than you have acknowledged”. I said: “You need to get this investigated, and then you need to take what’s necessary to the police or social services, and make sure your own current safeguarding is completely up to spec. Then, I can help you tell the world what you’ve discovered and what you’ve done”. To cut a long story short, they said: “Well, we’re certainly not going to do that. Off you go. We don’t want to work with you anymore”. I went away with all that information, and thought: “What am I supposed to do?”
It was a real conflict for me. That’s my tribe – not specifically a Iwerne tribe – but I’d grown up as a Conservative Evangelical. Those were my people – I’ve worked in Scripture Union. What am I supposed to do? A core issue in the church in its handling of safeguarding that’s not really been acknowledged is tribal loyalty. There are people who are more loyal to their tribe than they are to the church, or even perhaps to the gospel.
Is my loyalty to that tribe and its reputation? If I look further into this, or start talking, will it do reputational damage to the gospel? In any case, the whole thing was much bigger than I could handle by myself, because I’m a freelance lone operator. [Andrew went on to provide Cathy Newman of Channel 4 with the dossier he had been given by The Titus Trust]
RC: Was this your first experience of hearing from abuse survivors?
AG: I had a bit of experience, but not much. Now I hear from people who’ve been harmed in churches every day. I have a better understanding of what that does to people now, although I’m not a victim of abuse myself. That’s been two of the things that have really helped me – that I’ve not been a victim of abuse myself, so the scars are not mine, and also that I’m not ordained.
RC: To hear so many of those stories every day must be difficult?
AG: There is a vicarious impact. I’ve been doing this for quite a long time now, which I increasingly feel but don’t talk about very much. I’m not the one with the scars, but I still have to think what I can do to stop myself becoming bitter about the church.
Loads of really good people in the church are doing good things. I don’t want to become bitter and cynical, but part of the calling of people working in media is to be sceptical without being cynical. I have to try and do that. I’m still part of a church. I’m still an Evangelical Christian. I’m probably on the broad end of Evangelical theology, but I would still be happy to identify there.
RC: There is a new version of Bleeding for Jesus out recently – what led you to revise it?
AG: When I produced the first edition of the book it was a lone journey. I was trying to find a way through all this information and to make sense and tell a story out of it. Since then, many people have got in touch with me. I’ve had more time with victims and survivors, both of John Smyth and of others. I’ve wanted to go back and produce something more three-dimensional, with insight from other people. Since 2021 a lot has happened, the Makin Report, the resignation of Justin Welby, the revelations about David Fletcher.
RC: In the revised book, you tell more of John Smyth’s story, about his father – who was more of a fantasy father than a reality?
AG: It’s very tempting to try and be an amateur psychologist. I try and present some of the facts and let people make their own conclusions. It’s pretty clear to me that some of this behaviour derives from the theology and culture of Evangelicalism.
And that it’s crucially important at this stage for Evangelicals to do that work of analysis – to do it bravely, to say what is it about our culture and our theology that has resulted in this. Obviously, it’s not only Evangelical Christians who’ve had these issues; a lot of abuse happens at the extreme Evangelical end of the church, or at the extreme Catholic end of the church.
What have those two tribes in the church got in common? One of them is a disdain for the human body, and that translates into part of our discipleship being to regard our own bodies as enemies that need to be subdued. We need to own up to that. We still haven’t got sufficient honesty and self-analysis from the Evangelical church.
RC: What impact do you think conservative teaching on sexuality has had here?
AG: There’s no doubt in my mind that repressed sexuality was a huge driver for John Smyth, and for others. Sexual frustration gets sublimated into other kinds of quite bizarre behaviour, which they can justify to themselves, because it’s not sex. Smyth’s abuse was clearly driven by his own sexual confusion. But this is not really about homosexuality. It is about power.
RC: Reading the book again, the power Smyth had was so incredible that, as adults, those he abused drove to Winchester to see him. Why do you think they felt compelled to submit themselves like that in an ongoing way?
AG: It’s the nature of a cult. We tend to think that people who join cults are somehow weak-minded, more vulnerable people. But they are people who want to be wholehearted about their convictions, their beliefs. John Smyth would tell people: “You are brilliant, you’re bright, you have a great future. I believe in you. You are 99% committed. If you want to be 100% committed to Jesus, you just need to take this last step of submitting yourself to me”. People who were passionate about their commitment would want to go the last step – whatever it cost.
Broadly speaking, victims and survivors fall into three groups in terms of the way they respond. There are some who are able to say: “I draw a line under this, and I’m going to get on with my life. I’m not going to be defined by it. I’m going to move on.”
Then, there are some who say: “I can’t square the experience I’ve had with what I believe about God, or the world or the church, and I’m going to fight until we get some resolution – until the church, for instance, puts things right and acknowledges what’s been wrong.” They continue to struggle. They’re the ones that you hear a lot about.
Then there’s a third group whose way of responding to abuse is simply to incorporate it into their lives and beliefs and say: “Well, that may have gone too far or something, but basically it doesn’t challenge my core beliefs”. These people stay within the same network, and they’re the ones who I think I’m most worried about. Those who have remained in the culture, and they’re living day by day with those contradictions.
RC: How have all these experiences affected your personal faith?
AG: I am wholeheartedly Christian. I took part in a covenant service yesterday. I belong to a local church. It’s not an Anglican Church – I don’t think I could join an Anglican Church now, but that’s not to say that everybody in the Anglican Church is doing a bad thing. I have very little faith in the institutions of the church, but the local church doing its local thing I am still committed to.
RC: What would you most want church leaders to learn from everything you have experienced?
AG: Humility. The victims and survivors of church abuse are the church’s primary theologians. If you want to hear what God is saying to the church, go and spend extended time with somebody who’s been hurt, who’s not necessarily in the church. Listen to women. You’ll go a long way to find a woman who doesn’t have an experience of being abused. Listen humbly to people who are victims or survivors of abuse. Not in order to change your practices and your processes and your policies, but because it’s in the wounds of people that we meet Jesus. You have to allow yourself to get close. Go and be with people who are hurting and ask God what He wants to say to you.
Help and support
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this story, help is available via: FearFree Support (www.fearfree.org.uk); the Safe Spaces helpline on 0300 303 1056 / safespacesenglandandwales.org.uk; The Samaritans helpline – 116 123; The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (napac.org.uk).
