AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Helen Davidson
theguardian.com, Tuesday 7 October 2014
The head of the popular Hillsong Church, Brian Houston, has sought to distance his organisation from the actions of his father, Frank Houston, whose alleged sexual abuse of up to nine children is under examination at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
Pentecostal preacher Frank 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, who was then national president of the Assemblies of God, a worldwide grouping of Pentecostal churches.
In a statement outside the royal commission on Wednesday morning, Brian Houston commended the hearing for making church leaders “uncomfortable” because “we have a collective responsibility to protect children”.
“We must be diligent and never let our guard down,” he said.
However, he said people should understand that the abuse claims being examined happened before Hillsong existed, “when I was a teenager myself”.
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