Serial abuser John Smyth’s wife speaks for first time in Channel 4 documentary

The wife of John Smyth, one of the worst serial abusers of boys and young men in the Church of England, has spoken for the first time.

In a documentary for Channel 4 broadcast in December 2025, Anne Smyth said, ‘My inability, or my whatever it was, didn’t let me intervene. I just didn’t know how I could.

‘I practised too often not facing up to things that were wrong; and so I began not to see things as wrongly as they really were. Because I think more of the horror of it is clearer to me now.