John Smyth QC, who died aged 77 in 2018, violently beat boys who attended Christian summer camps in the 1970s and 80s.

Mr Welby worked in the evangelical Christian camps for public schoolboys run by Smyth, but denies any knowledge of the abuse at the time.

Smyth beat teenage boys who had attended the camps, according to a secret report from 1982. The report, by the charity Iwerne Trust which ran the camps, described Smyth's abuse against 22 young men. It reported that after identifying the boys, mostly from public school Winchester College, Smyth took them to his home in Hampshire and carried out lashings with a garden cane in his shed.

8 of the boys received a total of 14,000 lashes, according to the report, written by two clergymen. 2 more boys received 8,000 strokes between them over three years.

Both the Iwerne Trust and Winchester College knew about the abuse in the 1980s but failed to report it to the police.

Smyth subsequently moved to Zimbabwe where he continued to run holiday camps for boys. He refused to comment on the allegations before he died.