Gauntlett steps down from Anglican church’s child abuse inquiry panel

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba has confirmed accepting Advocate Jeremy Gauntlett’s decision to step down from the church’s inquiry panel into serial child abuser John Smyth.

This after Wits University academic, Dr Hylton White, wrote an open letter to the church, accusing Gauntlett of abusing him in the 1980s when he was a teenager.

Archbishop Makgoba says that he consulted the other panel members on the letter and they discussed Gauntlett’s removal.

The Archbishop appointed Gauntlett, Dr Mamphela Ramphele and retired Judge Ian Farlam to a three-person review panel in November last year.

He set up the inquiry into whether the Anglican Church in Cape Town has met its obligation to keep its members safe from abuse after the release of a report in Britain revealing that a former UK lawyer, John Smyth, had perpetrated serious abuses in Britain and Zimbabwe in the 1980s and 1990s.

Smyth attended an Anglican church in Cape Town first in the early 2000s and again months before he died in 2018. –  Reporting by Amahle du Toit