In this guest post, Simon Hunter, of 13 Old Square Chambers comments on the legal claim of the Zimbabwean victims of John Smyth  against the Church of England

On 4 October 2025 we posted Legal claim from Zimbabwean victims of John Smyth which reproduced the Press Release issued by the law firm Leigh Day; the firm had been instructed by seven Zimbabwean victims of John Smyth to bring a legal claim against the Church of England, alleging that senior clergy and church officers orchestrated a cover-up that enabled Smyth to continue abusing boys for decades.

Simon Hunter’s comments are below.

First, although most of the press release says that they are going to bring an action against “the Church of England”, Leigh Day are better lawyers than to think that the Church has any single legal personality. It seems from the press release that a letter of claim has been sent to a single parish, St Andrew the Great, Cambridge. (Also, they haven’t yet technically brought a claim – they’ve sent a letter of claim, which is only a precursor step.)

Second, there are going to be real questions here about duty of care, even if they can get past the obvious limitation problems (which they might be able to). Again, three questions arise. First, is Cambridge, St Andrew necessarily responsible for the actions of the Rev’d Mr Ruston in this regard? He won’t necessarily have been employed by the parish, even if he was ministering there. (Certainly today he would likely be employed by the Diocese, not by the parish.). Mr Ruston’s principal connection with this affair was that he wrote a report, but that was commissioned by the Iwerne Trust. Why is the parish liable for that? Why should they be liable for what he did or didn’t do after writing that report, in relation to something which doesn’t seem to have happened in the parish?

Also, why should Cambridge, St Andrew be responsible for the entirety of a cover up over which they had no control whatsoever and which involved people who they certainly did not employ, indeed people higher up in the hierarchy than they were? The real defendants should be the perpetrators of the cover up. At least some of them are still alive, so why not at least include them as defendants (and send them letters of claim too)? Was it reasonably foreseeable that doing what they did in covering the Smyth affair up (which was at best stupid and at worst abhorrent – the Makin Report made me very angry) would lead to what happened in South Africa and Zimbabwe, i.e. is a duty of care even owed to these claimants?

Third, the relief that is apparently being sought is “a full apology and a full independent review into learning from the abuses perpetrated by Smyth in Zimbabwe and South Africa, as well as financial compensation“. The financial part of this seems almost an afterthought, tagged on the end just so that there is something (as litigators say) pleadable to put into a claim form, perhaps because there are some legal problems with the claim, see above. The English court cannot order anyone to apologise, and it cannot order anyone to commission a “review into learning” in England, let alone in Zimbabwe or South Africa. The Makin Review has undertaken that work in England, and the claimants rely on its findings, but it is for the churches in Zimbabwe and South Africa to undertake that work in their own jurisdictions.

In terms of an apology, when Archbishop Welby resigned he said that he took personal and institutional responsibility. What more apology could be given that would do any better? In particular, how is an apology from the parish of St Andrew the Great, Cambridge going to change anything?

My reading of the press release is that this is for the news cycle as much as it is in any expectation of actually getting anything much in court. It is also interesting that this was put out on Saturday: not a normal legal working day for lawyers, but in this case the day after the announcement of the new Archbishop. It does feel a little deliberately timed. I’d also be fascinated to read the whole letter of claim.

Simon  Hunter