Watch No Evil review – This nuanced documentary about Anglican child abuse is absolutely horrific | TV and radio

COn Smith was a sadistic predator who used to groom the boys in his care and then beat them so brutally that he had to provide them with adult diapers to wear afterwards lest they leave blood on the chairs in his house when he brought them back from his shed. He upgraded the shed at one point to make it soundproof. One man who suffered at Smith’s hands as a boy remembers bleeding for weeks afterward. Another says: “Honestly, I thought I was going to die.” Another says that despite the pain, the worst part was afterward, when Smith was covering the boy’s bloodied body, pressing his nose to his sweaty face into the boy’s neck and giving him butterfly kisses. In his nightmares, “those scrolls” he recalls.

Smith, who died in 2018, was also a husband and father of three, a respected lawyer, a prominent Christian missionary, a moral activist, and a man deeply involved with Winchester College (where he gave talks on law and Anglicanism and invited interested boys to his family home for further discussions over Sunday lunches) and with the Church of England. He ran Christian summer camps for boys in Dorset and Zimbabwe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. All this gave him countless opportunities to indulge his sadism. One of the boys in his care, Mentor Nyachuru, died. “Accidental drowning,” Smith said. Nyachuru was a strong swimmer. His family remains convinced that their 16-year-old son died as a result of Smith’s abuse and was subsequently put in the water. Smith succeeded in discrediting the lawyer who was to try him for murder and fled back to England.

See No Evil, an immaculately made and absolutely harrowing two-part documentary about the man who one report says (coming very long after the fact) was perhaps the most prolific serial abuser ever associated with the Church of England, covers all this and more. The details mentioned by the men who remember him are extremely disturbing, not only when they recount what happened in the shed but also the quiet musings between them. “He turned into someone whose intentions I couldn’t quite calculate,” says Andy Morse, a Wickham henchman who suffered from severe homesickness and was drawn to the charismatic visitor to the school who presented himself as an ideal father figure. He, his best friend, Mark Steppe – who was an orphan when Smith met him and inhaled his vulnerability “like a pheromone” – and Graham speak so eloquently and with dignity through their mass of internal conflict that it is humbling to witness.

There were, as is often the case, opportunities to stop this demonic predator over the course of his 35-year career of inflicting terrible harm under the guise of punishing boys for their sins and calling them to the Lord. The story of Channel 4’s investigation into who knew what and when is intertwined with survivor testimony (although Graham, with unflinching politeness, says he prefers not to be referred to as such. “I know this is very controversial, but I’m still a victim,” he says. “I’m not sure I’ve come out or will come out the other side of this.”)

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was, as a young man, a teacher at the Iwerne camps at the same time as Smith, but denies knowledge of anything that happened at the time. McCain’s independent report later found that from at least July 2013, Welby, along with several other senior figures in the Church of England, had been aware of the seriousness of Smith’s abuse, and that Welby “had a personal moral responsibility” to reassure himself that the matter was being pursued by the authorities.

See No Evil also takes in the experiences of the Smith family. Theirs was a fear-torn family, built on the imperative not to “insult” their father. Daughters Fiona and Caroline lived in fear of his temper, always knowing, Fiona says, that their father was “an insecure adult…there was always something ‘off about him’.” Peter John, the only son and “golden boy” – whom his sisters teased about it – lived to please his father and followed him into the Christian service. His memories, when they come, are terrible. Their mother Anne met Smith when she was sixteen and devoted herself to being the ideal Christian wife. Fiona considers her his “first victim” although the question of whether this completely absolves her of responsibility for what she knew of his crimes arises between them.

The film gives all participants’ contributions time to breathe, and time for the viewer to ponder the many nuanced and intelligent ideas presented. The grace and forgiveness – towards Anne – is astonishing and only brings more relief to the evil of the man who has done it, and who has made it necessary. The family still believes in God. Those of us who don’t probably find ourselves hoping that there is at least a hell.

I also hope Welby is watching.