Official finding Christian institutions & contexts Anglican and Episcopal Winchester and Iwerne Minster, Dorset, England, United Kingdom · 2024

Makin Review: independent inquiry finds Church of England cover-up of John Smyth's Iwerne camp abuse; Archbishop of Canterbury resigns

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Iwerne camp leader and lay evangelical authority over camp attendees

Organization

Iwerne Trust, Church of England

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Smyth held direct pastoral and disciplinary authority as an adult lay leader over teenage boys and young men recruited through the Iwerne camps' evangelical Christian ministry to England's top boarding schools; beatings were framed to victims in explicitly spiritual and scriptural terms as chastisement for sin, and camp/church authority structures suppressed disclosure for over three decades.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2024-11-07 · published independent statutory-style inquiry finding

Independent review commissioned by the Church of England (Keith Makin). The Makin Review found that John Smyth subjected as many as 130 boys and young men in the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa to sadistic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse over five decades, and that recipients of a 1982 internal report into the abuse — including senior clergy — participated in an active cover-up that prevented the report from reaching the police or becoming public. Smyth died in 2018 without ever being charged. Publication of the review's findings led directly to the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, on 12 November 2024, over his handling of the 2013 disclosure.

Documented coercion mechanisms

spiritual mentorship and scriptural authority over boys and young men at Christian camps
institutional cover-up by camp leadership and senior clergy who received a 1982 report and suppressed it

Cited record

Sources

official report commission report 'The Makin Review', Church of England, published 7 November 2024.: The published independent review into the Church of England's response to allegations against John Smyth.
institutional reporting reference 'Makin Review', Wikipedia, accessed 2026-07-19.: Summary of the review's findings, publication history and the resulting resignation of Archbishop Justin Welby.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

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Source and tier basis: https://www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/makin-review-published Corpus classification: official-report; evidentiary role: commission-report. SHA-256 e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makin_Review Corpus classification: institutional-reporting; evidentiary role: reference. SHA-256 ffe77a4db353834d05177a321fd10c4276d16ccfab665149dbcafce41965c63e
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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