Hillsong Pastor Brian Houston: ‘there May Be More Abused’

news.com.au
October 10, 2014

http://www.news.com.au/national/hillsong-pastor-brian-houston-there-may-be-more-abused/story-fncynjr2-1227086944274

HILLSONG senior pastor Brian Houston says it may never be known how many children his father Frank Houston abused.

On his final day of giving evidence at a royal commission into how Pentecostal churches responded to complaints of child sexual abuse, the popular Sydney preacher was asked if he now accepted his father had abused other children in New Zealand.

“I’ve no doubt, and we probably do not know how many. We may never know just how far it went,” he told the national inquiry on Friday.

Former jockey Darren Beadman addresses the congregation, watched closely by Frank Houston, in 1997. Source: News Limited

Brian Houston outside the The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Source: News Corp Australia

For the past four days, the focus of the hearing has been on how Brian Houston and the body he led — the Assemblies of God (AoG) — responded to revelations in 1999 that church elder and well-known preacher Frank Houston had abused a boy in Sydney in the 1970s. Frank Houston had confessed to his son of just one incident with that boy.

But the victim, now in his 50s, told the commission there were many assaults on him by Frank Houston, who died in 2004.

Allegations about offences in New Zealand became known around the same time, involving six children.

Brian Houston on Friday again defended his handling of his father’s case and denied he deliberately omitted in his written statement to the royal commission that he had consulted a lawyer at King & Wood Mallesons about the allegations against his father.

“Where I went as my father’s son, to go to see a lawyer about my father — this commission is about institutional child abuse so in that sense, I don’t see that it was particularly relevant that I went so see a lawyer. It was something that was between a father and son,” he said.

Pastor Barbara Taylor, from the Emmanuel Christian Family Church, gave evidence about the man known as “AHA” Source: News Corp Australia

Brian Houston pictured giving a sermon at Hillsong. Source: Supplied

The pastor also denied he tried to play down to the inquiry his involvement in a $10,000 compensation payment to the victim, referred to as AHA for legal reasons.

Brian Houston said he only recently recalled AHA had raised in a phone call with him the fact a promised cheque had not arrived. He also remembers feeling “frustrated” during that conversation that his father had not followed up on his promise to AHA to make the payment, which was later fulfilled.

During cross examination, Brian Houston was again asked about a perceived conflict of interest that he, as national president of AoG and as senior pastor at the church where his father preached, addressed the allegations.

He maintained there was no such conflict.

“No, because I acted professionally. I followed it through,” he told the commission.

Minutes of an AoG executive meeting called by Brian Houston on December 22, 1999, record Frank Houston was suspended.

AoG procedures required he be stood down permanently because he had admitted to abusing a minor.

Mr Houston said his father never preached again.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday completed its hearing into Frank Houston. It’s now examining how the Pentecostal movement handled abuse allegations at the Northside Christian College in Victoria.