AUSTRALIA
The Australian
OCTOBER 09, 2014 1
Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney
THE father of Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston was allowed to resign and offered a financial “retirement package” by a meeting of church elders, despite admitting he sexually abused young boys, a royal commission has heard.
Confidential documents tendered to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse show church officials within the Pentecostal movement were aware in 2000 that William Francis “Frank” Houston abused seven boys.
Frank Houston admitted the offences and was initially suspended by his son after the first claims came to light in 1999, the commission heard. Brian Houston took over his father’s Sydney Christian Life Centre the same year, merging it with his own Hills Christian Life Centre in the city’s northwest to form the Hillsong Church.
Frank Houston’s resignation letter to the City Hillsong Church in November 2000 makes no mention of the allegations. “I hereby wish to tender my resignation … as I feel it is time for (his wife) Hazel and I to enter retirement,” says the letter.
Minutes of a “special elders meeting” held “in the boardroom of Hillsong Church” show Brian Houston was present when his father’s resignation letter was tabled five days later.
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