A number of Christian safeguarding professionals and prominent evangelical church leaders have voiced their support for William Taylor, Rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, after he disclosed that he too had been one of the late John Smyth’s many victims.
Taylor had wanted to keep the abuse ‘private, though not secret’, but had felt compelled to speak publicly after it had been implied on social media that he had covered up Smyth’s abuse.
Taylor stated that, ‘as a young Christian aged 20, I was deceived by Smyth and first beaten in his shed in August 1981. I recall being beaten twice more, the last in early December 1981. After that, I never went again’.
