Hillsong founder Brian Houston vows to return home to fight charges

Hillsong founder Brian Houston has vowed to return to Australia to front charges of having concealed his father’s sexual abuse of a young boy in 1969 and 1970.

Hillsong founder Brian Houston has vowed to return to Australia to front charges of having concealed his father’s sexual abuse of a young boy in 1969 and 1970.

Houston, 67, was charged by NSW police on Thursday, while he and his wife Bobbie were preaching stateside, accused of concealing his dead father Frank’s historic sexual abuse of a seven-year-old boy.

The popular Pentecostal church today issued a statement saying Mr Houston, who vehemently denies the allegations, has every intention of returning to Australia to face the scheduled October court hearing into the claims.

Vowed to return... Hillsong leader Brian Houston.

“Pastor Brian has been based in the USA for the past three months and did not leave Australia recently, as has been suggested,” the statement read.

“He will soon be returning to Australia as is required and will – as he always does - adhere to all government directives and quarantine guidelines.”

The statement added: “As global senior pastor of a church with locations, ministries and community programs across the world, Pastor Brian spends several months every year working from the USA where Hillsong Channel and other church ministries are based.

“His application to leave Australia was done online in the usual manner and he was granted an exemption and was staying longer than three months.”

Father of three, Mr Houston, is currently preaching in Springfield and Kansas City in Missouri where Hillsong has a large presence. He faces up to five years behind bars if found guilty.

Brian Houston and his wife Bobbie have been travelling around the United States for the past three months. Picture: Instagram.

He was served with a Court Attendance Notice through his lawyer for concealing an indictable offence after advice from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The evangelical church leader will have to undergo two weeks of enforced hotel quarantine in Sydney before appearing in Downing Local Court on October 5.

Houston’s prior refusal to comment on his travel exemption comes after NSW Police Minister David Elliot accused him of receiving ‘preferential treatment’ and getting a five star suite last year when he returned from an overseas work trip.

Frank Houston.

Police allege that Mr Houston knew about the sexual abuse of a young male in the 1970s and failed to bring it to the attention of police. Picture: Instagram

The court attendance notice follows a two-year investigation by The Hills Police Area Command where the main campus of the international evangelical church is based.

The Royal Commission into Institutional responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told in 2014 that Brian Houston had silently sacked his father from the church in 1999 after learning of the allegations that Frank Houston had been sexually abusing a seven-year-old boy. At the time, Brian Houston was the National President of the Assemblies of God in Australia.

He has refuted any wrongdoing and told the royal commission the victim was old enough in 1999 to have made up his own mind about whether he wanted to report the matter to police.

The victim was then aged about 36.

New Zealand-born Frank Houston was the leader of the Assemblies of God in New Zealand during the 1960s and early 1970s.

He came to Australia from New Zealand to preach in 1969 and 1970 and on two occasions stayed with the boy’s family in Sydney.

Frank Houston, who died aged 82 in 2004, was never charged over the abuse but it emerged at the royal commission that he had also sexually assaulted about five other young boys while he had been a pastor in New ­Zealand at about the same period.

Police said the advice from the ODPP about charging Mr Houston was received by them earlier this week.

They said it would be alleged “the man knew information relating to the sexual abuse of a young male in the 1970s and failed to bring that information to the attention of police”.