He’s the vile QC who disgraced the church. At least I derailed his Australian mission

Warning: Graphic and distressing content

The Church of England has been rocked to its foundations by a sadomasochistic barrister. The archbishop of Canterbury has resigned for failing to blow the whistle, and more incurious high clerics will follow. So will the reputation of Mary Whitehouse, feted by our evangelicals for her attacks on homosexuals: she brought John Smyth, QC, to Australia in 1984 to expound their beliefs in “muscular Christianity”. That was the name they gave to his perverted beating of schoolboys, committed and covered up with the help of his legal distinction.

Smyth is not a priest, so he cannot be defrocked, but can he, posthumously, be de-silked?

John Smyth was allowed to move abroad in the full knowledge of church officials, where he continued to act with impunity. Credit: Channel 4 News

Smyth’s fame, as Whitehouse’s QC, gave him easy entry to great public (that is, private) schools like Winchester College, where he would select boys he liked the look of for assignations in his nearby garden shed. There, he would require them to confess to the sin of masturbation, and then embrace them naked before assaulting them with a cane until they bled. They were then attended by his wife, who provided nappies they would have to wear so that Matron would not notice the bloodstains. He ran camps for promising public schoolboys expected to rise high in church or state. Most were so traumatised that their lives have never prospered.

For many weeks in 1977, while I was defending Gay News magazine, and again in 1984, when Whitehouse tried to ban a play at the National Theatre, I sat in courtrooms alongside Smyth as he denounced homosexual practices. This was music to his clients’ ears, to the evangelical wing of the church, and to all too many judges of the day. Homosexuality, they had ruled, might have been legalised, but that did not mean it was acceptable. Smyth dredged up the blasphemy law, which had not been used for 50 years, to convict an editor for publishing a poem suggesting that gays could go to heaven.

Smyth conducted the trial in a tub-thumping, gay-bashing way. The poem, he explained (which had a verse envisaging a Roman centurion embracing Christ on the cross), “attacked the three fundamentals of the Christian faith – that Christ is without sin, that homosexuality is evil and that there cannot be sex in paradise”. He went on to describe this as “so vile it would be hard for the most perverted imagination to conjure up anything worse”. This, from a barrister given to slobbering over naked schoolboys before grievously assaulting them, takes some beating when it comes to perverted imaginations.

The accolade of being “Mrs Whitehouse’s counsel” gave him the status that helped defray suspicions, as it was greatly enhanced when he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel – reportedly at the insistence of Lord Dilhorne (the former Tory attorney-general Reginald Manningham-Buller) in recognition for his prosecution of Gay News. Smyth became the youngest silk in England, although his practice at the bar did not deserve it. It made him untouchable: he was given the run of Winchester to select victims, and of curious camps designed to groom boys from the 30 “best” private schools.

But by 1982 his time was running out – his depredations were outlined in a report to senior evangelicals. That did not deter Smyth from masterminding the next Mary Whitehouse attack on homosexuality – on the National Theatre, no less, for staging Howard Brenton’s play The Romans in Britain.

Parliament had immunised the theatre from censorship, but Smyth ingeniously found a way around it in relation to a scene in which a male actor, playing a Roman centurion – again – had simulated the rape of a young (but ancient) druid. He dredged up another old law, of indecency by a male in a public place – designed to prosecute men who touted for sex in public toilets. Smyth convinced magistrates that the National’s stage was a “public space” and so they allowed the case to go ahead to trial. The most I could do, as counsel for the National, was to defeat his efforts to have the play close.

But then, a very strange thing happened. The week before the trial, which he wanted to be his crowning achievement, Smyth pulled out without explanation. It was at first said that he was ill, but Whitehouse herself told me that he had received an urgent summons from God to serve as a missionary in Africa. That was indeed where he went, more likely as an ultimatum to leave the country from those who had seen the 1982 report and threatened to go to the police if he did not disappear.

British Morality Campaign founder Mary Whitehouse in Sydney in 1984, crusading against video pornography at St Andrews House.Credit: Grahame Roderick Roberts

Whitehouse’s only witness could not be sure about what he had seen from his seat in the gods at the National’s Olivier Theatre. He had thought he had descried the tip of the actor’s penis, but it might have been the tip of his thumb. The case collapsed and Whitehouse was left weeping as costs were awarded against her. It was the end of her courtroom crusade against the permissive society.

But did she know about the depravity of her leading counsel? It was common knowledge by 1984 in the evangelical circles in which she moved, and she must have been given a good reason for Smyth’s apparent abandonment. Later that year, however, she took him with her on a tour of Australia to promote “muscular Christianity”. They demanded to meet the attorney-general, whom (by coincidence) I was advising at the time, so I was able to advise Gareth Evans not to see them.

Smyth then returned to Zimbabwe, where, as a “distinguished QC” (silks are always “distinguished”), he ran his camps and by all reports assaulted as many as 80 young men, one of whom was found dead in his swimming pool. He was prosecuted inconclusively and then banned, but renewed his activities in South Africa. It is likely the church will face expensive civil actions from his victims.

On any view, Smyth was a villain who traumatised many of his youthful victims. He also promoted hatred of gays, under cover of his barrister’s gown. This much was in all the papers, so it was certainly known by Justin Welby, who resigned “in sorrow” this week as the archbishop of Canterbury over the church’s failure to stop Smyth’s assaults, even if he wasn’t aware of the torture in the garden shed.

As for the bar, it is not often – or at all – that a member of its top echelon turns out to be a sadistic sex abuser, who exploited his status to obtain access to overawe victims and then to divert suspicion from his eminent self. Were he a bishop, Smyth would doubtless be posthumously defrocked. Should the Lord Chancellor not posthumously de-silk him? He has certainly committed the disciplinary offence of lowering the repute of the bar. This might provide some very belated comfort to his torture victims, and a caution to counsel against inflamed rhetoric that demonises minorities, no matter how much their clients may want it.

Geoffrey Robertson, QC, is author of Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle For Global Justice, published this month.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service (1800RESPECT) on 1800 737 732.