Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston acquitted of concealing his father’s abuse of boy
CANBERRA, Australia — Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston was found not guilty Thursday of concealing his father’s child sex crimes in a case in Australia.
Houston, 69, was the Sydney-based church’s senior global pastor when police charged him two years ago with concealing a serious indictable offense. He resigned from his church roles months later.
Sydney Magistrate Gareth Christofi ruled that Houston had a reasonable excuse for not reporting his father’s offenses to police. Christofi accepted that Houston believed the victim, Brett Sengstock, did not want the abuse, which occurred in the 1970s, reported to police.
Sengstock testified at the trial, which began in December, that he never told Houston not to report the abuse.
Sengstock told reporters outside court that the verdict blamed him for the church’s failure to report Frank Houston to police.
“Frank Houston was no pioneer for Christianity. His legacy remains a faded memory of a pedophile,” Sengstock told reporters.
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“Regardless of today’s outcome, I have received a life sentence. Blaming the victim is as repulsive as the assaults themselves,” Sengstock added.
The magistrate said that regardless of what Sengstock himself told Brian Houston, Houston had been told of Sengstock’s attitude by others.
“Victims of sexual abuse ought to feel safe to confide in others without being concerned they are exposing those others to a criminal offense,” Christofi said.
Houston appeared teary-eyed when he spoke to media outside court. He had faced a potential five-year prison sentence if convicted.
Hillsong, which has three locations in California, has seen multiple churches leave the Australia-born ministry in recent weeks.
“I want to express my sadness to Brett Sengstock, genuine sadness about what my father did to him and all his victims. He was obviously a serial pedophile. We probably will never know the extent of his pedophilia,” Houston told reporters.
“A lot of people’s lives have been tragically hurt, and for that I’ll always be very sad. But I’m not my father,” he added.
Hillsong acknowledged the ruling in a statement. “Our prayer is that those impacted deeply and irrevocably by the actions of Frank Houston will find peace and healing, and that our former senior pastor Brian Houston and his family can look to the future and continue to fulfill God’s purpose for their lives,” the church said.
Houston became aware in 1999 of his father’s abuse of Sengstock, then 7 years old. His father confessed and was defrocked as an Assemblies of God pastor. Frank Houston died in 2004 at age 82 without being charged.
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Brian Houston shared information about his father’s crimes with church leaders but not with police.
Prosecutor Dareth Harrison said Houston had found a convenient excuse to avoid reporting the allegation to authorities to protect the church and his father.
Christofi said proving that motivation beyond a reasonable doubt was a “tall order indeed.”
Prosecutors also argued that Brian Houston had used vague language when he spoke publicly about his father’s abuse and removal as a minister.
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Christofi found that while Houston might have used euphemisms in public, his meaning was obvious, and speaking “widely and freely” about his father’s abuse indicated that he wanted people to know what had happened, the magistrate said.
“That is the very opposite of a cover-up,” Christofi said.
The charge followed the findings of an Australian government inquiry published in 2015 into institutional responses to allegations of child sex abuse. The inquiry found that Frank Houston had been allowed to retire quietly in response to his crimes.
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