An independent review published in 2024 concluded that he subjected more than 100 boys and young men to "traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks"[1]: 1  over a period of four decades.

On 12 November 2024, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby announced he would resign due to the part he played in the church's failure to acknowledge Smyth's child abuse.

[4] He also initially acted for Whitehouse in her failed private prosecution of the National Theatre production of Howard Brenton's play The Romans in Britain in 1980, but withdrew from the case in 1982, which was stated at the time to be due to illness, but was later documented in the Makin Review to have been part of his agreement with the Iwerne Trust after they became aware of his abuse.

JASA describes itself as "a coalition of corporations‚ individuals and churches committed to upholding and fighting for justice and the highest moral standards in South African society".

[9] It emerged on 3 February 2017 that the board of the Justice Alliance of South Africa had asked Smyth to immediately stand down as the head of the organisation.

[1]: 35  The Makin Review identified 16 pupils who were abused and an additional six to eight who were groomed; it qualified this number with "we strongly suspect that the true figure is probably greater".

[1]: 20 Smyth moved to Zimbabwe in 1984, where in 1986, he set up Zambesi Ministries, which held summer camps for boys from the country's leading schools.

[1]: 130  A 21-page report by lawyer David Coltart was published in October 1993 and circulated to head teachers and church leaders in Zimbabwe.

[8] The possibility of culpable homicide was, after a long investigation, ruled as unlikely, but the incident raised concerns about Smyth's behaviour towards boys in his care.

[8][15] The Makin Review revealed that he had continued his abuse of boys, including "beating with table tennis bat, enforced nudity, naked swimming, and showering" and that he had given "regular lectures about masturbation".

[1]: 169  The Makin Review suggested that there "is some evidence of John Smyth continuing to groom and potentially abusing young men in South Africa".

[18] In February 1989, John Thorn, the headmaster of Winchester College during the years that Smyth was active, released his autobiography, which included the following:[19] I was told the extraordinary news that the neighbouring barrister had gained such personal control over a few of the senior boys in the group, and had kept it after they left the school, that he was claiming to direct their burgeoning relationships with girls, and was, with their consent, punishing them physically when they confessed to him they had sinned.On 3 February 2017, two days after Smyth was publicly named as an abuser, Anne Atkins, an evangelical Christian, revealed via an article in The Daily Telegraph that she had referred to him in her 2012 article.

[20] The independent review commissioned by Winchester College and published in January 2022 included the above passage from Thorn's autobiography and indicated that it was a reference to Smyth.

[25][26] I am one of the survivors of John Smyth's appalling activities ... the beating I endured in the infamous garden shed was violent, excruciating and shocking.After the abuse became public, Graham Tilby, national safeguarding adviser for the Church of England, said: "Clearly, more could have been done at the time to look further into the case.

[34] Graystone described how from 1976 onwards, Smyth developed an interest in boys at Winchester College's Christian Forum, a body that grew substantially in size during the so-called "evangelical revival" at the school in the mid-1970s, with 35 out of 50 boys at one boarding house – Kingsgate House (or "Beloes"), from which Smyth selected the majority of his victims – at one time attending Bible studies.

[35] Smyth attended the Christian Forum nearly every week, giving a talk each term, and he would regularly drive two or three boys from this group to his home, Orchard House in Morestead just outside Winchester, for Sunday lunch with his family and in summer to swim in the pool.

Smyth would then beat the boy, a gym shoe being used at first, then a garden cane, with the number of strokes, as detailed in the Ruston report, initially equating to the severity of their supposed spiritual infringement, or, in Graystone's words, "related to 'specific' sins".

[37] Over time the number of strokes increased, and the caning would be undertaken not as punishment for any particular "sinful" deed or thought but as "prophylaxis; a spiritual discipline to keep the soul in order".

[37] Adult nappies and lotion were given to boys after the beating to prevent them from bleeding on the Smyth family furniture when they returned across the garden lawn to the house.

[37] When he was carrying out a beating a white yachting pennon would be planted on the lawn so that his wife Anne and members of his family knew that he should not be disturbed.

[41] After many of the boys from Winchester College whom Smyth had beaten left the school in 1979, Smyth, through his role at Iwerne, carried on inviting them to Orchard House in Morestead, where the beatings continued, and he took a group of them on holiday to St Just in Cornwall, where they rented a cottage called Bosloe: this group named themselves the "Bosloe Boys".

Smyth's relation with Simon Doggart developed at Cambridge, where a group of Iwerne men at Magdalene College met regularly at the Round Church in the city; Mark Ruston was preacher at the church and Justin Welby a regular attendee, with Welby soon starting to attend camps at Iwerne.

[47][1]: 1, 25, 61–63, 118–120  Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who had been informed of Smyth's abuse in 2013 but took no action against him, resigned over the scandal on 12 November 2024, after some members of the General Synod had started a petition calling on him to step down.

[50] After Cathy Newman's Channel 4 reports were broadcast in 2017, PJ confronted his father and said that he was willing to go on a global tour with him so that John Smyth could do the right thing and apologise to his victims.