AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Helen Davidson
theguardian.com, Thursday 18 September 2014
Child abuse allegations against a preacher who helped build Australia’s Pentecostal movement will be investigated by the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, it was announced on Thursday.
The commission will examine how the Sydney Christian Life Centre and Hills Christian Life Centre (now Hillsong Church) and Assemblies of God in Australia (now Australian Christian Churches) treated allegations against the Pentecostal Christian pastor William Francis “Frank” Houston and two other men.
Houston, who died in 2004, confessed in 2000 to sexually abusing a boy in New Zealand more than 30 years earlier. He was immediately sacked by his son, Brian Houston, the high-profile founder of Hillsong.
Further allegations have been made in recent years, including that Houston sexually abused a trainee pastor in the 1980s in an attempt to “cure” him of homsexuality.
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