Author: Daniel Taggart, Reader in Clinical Psychology and Public Voice Scholar, University of Essex

Justin Welby resigned as archbishop of Canterbury following a damning report about a prolific child abuser in the Church of England. The report into decades of abuse of more than 100 boys perpetrated by the barrister John Smyth QC in the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe detailed the Church of England’s cover-up of the abuse. It found that Welby failed to act on safeguarding concerns after he was notified of the abuse in 2013. This, and the fact that he had an acquaintanceship with Smyth since they were briefly colleagues in the 1970s, left his position untenable. “It is very…