Sister of John Smyth’s Zimbabwean Victim Narrates Ordeal
Camp attendees have told of how John would often parade around without clothes in the boys’ dormitories.
Sister of John Smyth's Zimbabwean Victim Narrates Ordeal
The sister of a 16-year-old boy who drowned while swimming naked at a Christian holiday camp in Zimbabwe run by child abuser John Smyth blames the Church of England for his death.
“The Church knew about the abuses that John Smyth was doing. They should have stopped him. Had they stopped him, I think my brother [Guide Nyachuru] would still be alive,” Edith Nyachuru told the BBC.
The British barrister had moved to Zimbabwe with his wife and four children from Winchester in England in 1984 to work with an evangelistic organisation.
This was two years after an investigation revealed he had subjected boys in the UK, many of whom he had met at Christian holiday camps run by a charity he chaired that was linked to the Church, to traumatic physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
The 1982 report, prepared by Anglican clergyman Mark Ruston, about the canings said “the scale and severity of the practice was horrific”, with accounts of boys beaten so badly they bled, with one describing how he needed to wear nappies until his wounds scabbed over.
Despite these shocking revelations, mainly involving boys from elite British public schools, the Rushton report was not widely circulated.
A decade on, aged 50, Smyth had established himself as a respected member of the Christian community in Zimbabwe.
Sister of John Smyth's Zimbabwean Victim Narrates Ordeal
He had set up his own organisation, Zambesi Ministries, with funding from the UK – and was meting out similar punishments at camps that he marketed at the country’s top schools.
Ms Nyachuru says her brother’s trip had been an early Christmas present from one of his other sisters, who had picked up one of Smyth’s brochures and been impressed with all the activities on offer for the week.
Nakedness appears to be something Smyth was fixated on at his camps. Camp attendees have told of how he would often parade around without clothes in the boys’ dormitories – where he also slept, unlike other staff members.
He would also shower naked with them in the communal showers and the boys were ordered not to wear underpants in bed.
“He promoted nakedness and encouraged the boys to walk around naked at the summer camp,” a former student who attended a camp at Ruzawi in 1991 told the BBC.
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Smyth gave talks on masturbation, would sometimes lead prayers in the nude and encouraged naked trampolining, an activity he described as “flappy jumping” – all behaviour noted in an investigation by Zimbabwean lawyer David Coltart that was launched in May 1993.
