Hillsong’s Brian Houston charged with concealing child sex abuse
The head of Hillsong Church Brian Houston has sensationally been charged with allegedly concealing child sex offences.
Police & Courts
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The head of the global Hillsong Church Brian Houston was on Thursday sensationally charged with allegedly concealing child sex offences committed by his father Frank Houston.
Houston, 67, 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 charge carries a maximum penalty of five years’ jail.
It follows a two-year investigation by officers attached to The Hills Police Area Command where the main campus of the international mega-church is based.
Brian Houston and his wife Bobbie have been preaching in the United States for the past three months and it is not known when they will return.
The Royal Commission into Institutional responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told in 2014 that Brian Houston had quietly 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 previously denied 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 man was then aged about 36.
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 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 time.
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”.
Houston is expected to appear in Downing Centre Local Court on October 5.
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