Let Us Prey- calls for Archbishop of Canterbury

After five years of sadistic beatings in a garden shed by one of the UK’s most prominent barristers, and with a “special beating” to mark his 21st birthday imminent, Andy Morse tried to take his own life.

The student had endured thousands of lashes on his naked buttocks administered in the name of Jesus by John Smyth QC. He could no longer endure the pain, terror and humiliation.

Fortunately, his housemates broke down the bathroom door and called an ambulance. But Morse was not Smyth’s only victim. There are more than 100 known survivors, and perhaps many others: public schoolboys who took part in a network of military-style Christian holiday camps in the 1970s and 80s.

A new book, Bleeding for Jesus, tells the story of Smyth, the moral crusader who fought legal battles for “Christian values” in Britain’s courts while allegedly mercilessly abusing young men at his Hampshire home, and the Iwerne Trust, which organised the “Bash camps” that were his hunting ground and which turned a blind eye to his activities.