When did the Anglican Church know about the sexual abuse accusations against Jeremy Gauntlett?

Legal heavyweight, British-South African advocate Jeremy Gauntlett SC, KC, has stepped down from an Anglican Church panel of inquiry into serial abuser John Smyth following sexual abuse allegations levelled against him.

In a statement on Saturday, 18 January, the archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, said he had accepted a proposal from Gauntlett on Friday to resign from the panel following allegations made in an email to him on Thursday evening.

“On the evening of Thursday, January 16th 2025, I received a letter concerning a quite separate allegation of abuse in which the complainant said that if Advocate Gauntlett did not step down from the panel by January 31st, he (the complainant) would make the allegation public. Without further communication, the complainant, later that evening, published details of his allegations on social media,” said Makgoba.

AfriForum legal representative, Adv Jeremy Gauntlett at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on September 04, 2023 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Volksblad / Mlungisi Louw)

Gauntlett’s alleged victim, a senior lecturer in social anthropology at Wits University, Dr Hylton White, went public with the sexual abuse allegations against Gauntlett in a Facebook post on Thursday evening. In his post, White said the Anglican Church had been told about Gauntlett privately, and had failed to respond, “so I’m going public”.

“I have used certain private channels to alert the Anglican Church in South Africa to the fact that Jeremy Gauntlett is not of fit character to assess this matter. These have been ignored,” wrote White.

“I want to make it perfectly clear to the public that the findings of any panel on child sex abuse allegations that involve the influence of Jeremy Gauntlett has [sic] no credibility whatsoever. A powerfully [sic] professional man who manipulates a teenager into sexual activity based on the need for affirmation is not qualified to sit in judgement on the matter of the church’s handling of Smyth’s abuses,” he continued.

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Archbishop Thabo Makgoba. (Photo: Nardus Engelbrecht / Gallo Images)

In November 2024, Makgoba announced that he had appointed a three-person panel comprising Gauntlett, former University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Dr Mamphela Ramphele, and retired judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal Ian Farlam, to probe how the Anglican Church in South Africa handled allegations that Smyth, a now-deceased British barrister, had abused children in the UK and Zimbabwe.

After learning of Gauntlett’s position on the panel, White told Daily Maverick he had attempted to inform the church of Gauntlett’s alleged abuse in emails first sent through an intermediary on 9 January.

“Even if both emails had miraculously gone missing the first time round, the two original emails were also re-forwarded to the archbishop at his personal assistant’s request on Friday, with their original dates of sending in the headers. His [Makgoba’s] receiving these on Friday means that he knew very well before he made his statement on Saturday that I had in fact reached out via a reputable intermediary, known to the church, well before Thursday,” White told Daily Maverick on Sunday.

When questioned about the discrepancies between Makgoba’s statement where he claimed to only have been alerted about White’s concerns about Gauntlett in an email on Thursday — the day White went public with the allegations — and White’s claims that he had attempted to inform the archbishop in previous emails through an intermediary, a church spokesperson responded:

“For the archbishop to engage through the media with a person reporting abuse would contravene the church’s guidelines on responding to them.”

The question of when the Anglican Church first knew about the allegations against Gauntlett is particularly important in light of the recent resignation of the Church of England’s 105th archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, over the church’s cover-up of serial abuse by Smyth for more than five decades.

Smyth panel of inquiry

Gauntlett is one of South Africa’s top advocates and was former president Jacob Zuma’s senior counsel in the Nkandla matter at the Constitutional Court, in which the court found Zuma had breached the Constitution by failing to implement the recommendations in the Public Protector’s report.

He also represented the State in, inter alia, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development v Southern African Litigation Centre, which centred on SA’s obligation to arrest former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir under the Rome Statute.

Read in Daily Maverick: Archbishop Makgoba announces inquiry to determine if Anglican Church failed to protect congregants from abuse

Smyth, who organised Christian summer camps in the 1980s and 1990s, is believed to be the most prolific sexual, physical and psychological serial abuser associated with the Anglican Church.

He abused at least 100 boys and young men in the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa, where he settled after being barred from re-entering Zimbabwe and where he worshipped at an Anglican church, St Martins in Cape Town.

He died in Cape Town in 2018 at the age of 75.

A long-awaited independent review by Keith Makin into the Church of England’s handling of the serious allegations of abuse against Smyth, published in November 2024, concluded that he perpetuated this abuse “likely up until his death in August 2018”.

The 251-page review led to Welby’s resignation on 12 November 2024, after it found that he had failed to report Smyth to authorities when he was informed of the abuse in August 2013, shortly after he became archbishop of Canterbury.

Had he done so, the report found, Smyth could have been stopped sooner.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Makgoba’s statement on church abuse coverup and resignation of Archbishop of Canterbury draws fire from within

In the words of Makin in his report: “Despite the efforts of some individuals to bring the abuse to the attention of authorities, the responses by the Church of England and others were wholly ineffective and amounted to a coverup.”

Justin Welby, the Archbishop Of Canterbury arrives to deliver his Easter Sermon at Canterbury Cathedral on April 17, 2022 in Canterbury, England. (Photo by Hollie Adams/Getty Images)

‘Conflict of interest’

In his statement on Saturday, Makgoba said he had accepted Gauntlett’s proposal to step down, subject to consultation with the other members of the panel.

“On the morning of Friday, January 17th, Advocate Gauntlett proposed that in the circumstances created by the letter, he step down from the panel, conveying a concern that the work of the Smyth inquiry not be in any way delayed or obstructed by the issue.

“As someone whose handling of the Smyth matter is being investigated by the panel, I have kept a distance from its work but felt that in the circumstances I needed to take this step,” said Makgoba.

Makgoba said he held consultations with the other panel members at Bishopscourt, Cape Town, on Saturday, and had accepted Gauntlett’s proposal “on the well-recognised principle in the law that even the appearance of a conflict of interest can be enough to trigger recusal from a matter.

“Justice Farlam and Dr Ramphele have accepted Advocate Gauntlett’s decision with regret, and have agreed that they will continue the panel’s inquiry to completion. It is expected that this will be accomplished shortly,” said Makgoba.

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He added that he awaited the panel’s findings on the “effectiveness” of the Anglican Church’s efforts to curb abuse within the church.

Daily Maverick contacted Gauntlett for comment on Sunday, but a response had not been received by the time of publication. DM