AUSTRALIA
7 News
AAP
BY ANNETTE BLACKWELL
October 8, 2014
The national executive of Australia’s Pentecostal movement knew nothing of complaints against preacher Frank Houston until his son called a special meeting to say he had stood his father down, an inquiry has heard.
The meeting, which took place at the Qantas Club at Sydney Airport three days before Christmas 1999, was called by Hillsong pastor Brian Houston.
At the time he was national president of the Assemblies of God – a confederation of about 1000 evangelical churches.
It took place more than one year after Pastor Barbara Taylor had raised with state executives of the AoG the matter of Frank Houston’s abuse of a seven-year-old boy in Sydney almost 30 years earlier.
Keith Ainge, former national secretary of AoG in Australia, has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Brian Houston reported at the meeting his father had admitted to a sexual act with a minor.
Pastor Ainge said he and the others “knew nothing of the complaints against Frank Houston” until the December 1999 meeting.
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