AUSTRALIA
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion
Boz Tchividjian | Oct 17, 2014
Disturbing news surfaced last week that the founder and senior pastor of one of the largest churches in Australia, and a church well known in this country for its worship music, failed to report his father for sexually abusing children. Brian Houston of Hillsong Church, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse that in October of 1999, he learned that an adult had reported being sexually abused as a child by leading Pentecostal pastor, Frank Houston. The elder Houston was permanently suspended from preaching and given a “retirement package”. The victim was sent $10,000.00. The church eventually uncovered up to eight more cases of child sexual abuse by Frank Houston before he passed away in 2004. None of these cases were ever reported to law enforcement.
Does any of this pass the “smell good” test? An adult comes forward to disclose being sexually victimized as a child by an influential minister who happens to be the father of another well-known minister. The son’s immediate response to hearing about this crime is not to contact the police, but to confront his father who immediately confesses. Even after the confession, Brian Houston doesn’t call the police, but instead attends a meeting with his father, an attorney, and the church CEO, where it is decided to offer the victim $10,000 as “final payment”. (Undoubtedly, a condition to receive this money would have been that the victim agree not to seek legal action against Houston or the church.) When he was recently asked why he didn’t report this crime, Brian Houston remarked, “This is one of the things that made it complicated. He was adamant he didn’t want any kind of police investigation or even a church investigation, he just wanted it dealt with and he just wanted to know that justice was going to happen.” The fact that a victim is an adult when they disclose being sexually assaulted as a child does not relieve those in leadership of the moral duty to report the crimes. Think about it, what if an adult had stepped forward to report that as a child they witnessed a pastor commit murder? What if there was evidence that this same pastor had actually murdered 8 other people? Would there be any hesitation by church leaders to report these crimes to the authorities? Even if the witness had requested them not to report? Interestingly, Brian Houston never provides a reason for not reporting the other 8 cases of abuse perpetrated by his father.
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