In the second episode of a two-part Channel 4 documentary, she reveals how Smyth first came to her saying he wanted to give boys “a whack or two”. And in a heartfelt message to his victims, she reveals she is “desperately sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him”.
“Parts of one’s life are very hurtful and hard,” Mrs Smyth said, recalling how she met her husband when she was 16 and was “in awe of him and proud of his gifts”. Later in their marriage, she began to see that he had “a very dominant character”.
“And I started to see things that gave me an unhappy or an unsteady feeling, which troubled me,” she said. “Everything was not – he had a favourite expression ‘tickety-boo’ – everything was certainly not ‘tickety-boo’.”
She recalled how Smyth had a “type” of boy to whom he would be particularly drawn, explaining: “He did go for fair-haired boys and sporty boys. I would watch his eyes watching some boy with fair hair walking across a field or whatever, and I was concerned about that.
“He did have a temper, and that was frightening. If something wasn’t quite right, he’d blast at me, and I would stay silent often. That annoyed him hugely, and he would say, ‘Say something, can’t you say something.’ I got quite good at making jokes of things, so that we could keep it light-hearted, and it wouldn’t get serious.”
Asked why she did not stand up to him, she said it was “difficult to know”, adding: “I think I realise now something I didn’t realise at the time, that he was two different people, sometimes more. And when another side of him took control, it was shattering. And I didn’t know how to break into that difficult person.”
‘One’s brain locks things out’
Explaining why she has finally decided to speak out, she said: “I suppose as a sort of protection. One’s brain, or memory, locks things out, rather like being anaesthetised. But of course, all anaesthetic does wear off, and has to wear off.”
Addressing her husband’s victims, Mrs Smyth said: “I am so sorry for what you went through, and how actually, I want to put my arms tightly around you and say, ‘You are amazing.’”
She went on: “I feel desperately sorry for them, desperately sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him, just to say to him ‘Why don’t you just stop all this?’”
During the documentary, the couple’s three children claim their mother was “bullied” by Smyth.
In conversation with her children, Mrs Smyth said: “I hated what he was doing. My inability or whatever it was didn’t let me in, and I just didn’t know how I could. I practised too often not facing up to things that were wrong. And so I began not to see things as wrongly as they really were. Because I think more of the horror of it is clearer to me now.
“Although I stayed by him all his life, all my life there, it was such a relief that he died. I want with all my heart to say I’m so sorry. I’m ashamed of myself.”
