By Georgina Mitchell
Former Hillsong leader Brian Houston was protecting the reputation of the church when he did not report his father’s sexual abuse of a child to police, and he must have known $10,000 paid to the victim was “hush money”, a court has been told.
The 69-year-old was charged in 2021 with concealing a serious indictable offence over failing to report his father Frank Houston’s crime to police between learning of it in 1999 and his father’s death in 2004. He has pleaded not guilty.
Brian Houston arrives at court on Thursday.Credit: Nick Moir
He told Downing Centre Local Court last year that he did not tell police of the sexual abuse, which happened in the 1970s, because the victim Brett Sengstock urged him not to.
Houston’s barrister Phillip Boulten, SC, said the case would turn on his client having a “reasonable excuse” due to respecting the victim’s wishes.
Frank Houston died in 2004.
In closing submissions on Thursday, Crown prosecutor Gareth Harrison said Frank Houston was seen as a “founding father” of Hillsong, then known as Sydney Christian Life Centre, and there was an “entrenched reverence” towards him.
He said this reverence “enforced a culture of silence” and Brian Houston knew he could “control the narrative” and protect the church and his father.
“The reason the accused failed to report the matter to the police was he was trying to protect the reputation of the church and the perpetrator, who was his father,” Harrison said.
The prosecutor said Sengstock “never” told Houston he did not want the matter reported to police.
Magistrate Gareth Christofi asked if it mattered what Houston’s motivation was.
Harrison said the motivation was “highly significant”. He said even if Houston believed Sengstock didn’t want the matter to be reported to police, this did not provide him with a reasonable excuse not to.
The prosecutor said Houston felt he had a responsibility to report the allegation to the church’s national executive, but this did not extend to secular authorities.
“The accused, the leader of this church in Australia, has gone to each of these individual people and told them, according to him, the details of what his father had confessed to,” Harrison said.
“It appears that no one … when told that a very high-ranking pastor was a paedophile, none of them thought it was a matter that should be raised with the police … On the accused’s evidence, he was certain none of them said anything.
“The culture in the church, and its members, was therefore to protect the church from scandal.”
Harrison said $10,000 in “hush money” was paid to Sengstock after he met with Frank Houston at a McDonald’s restaurant in Sydney’s north in 1999.
“He knew he had been bribed for his silence,” Harrison said.
“Frank Houston told him ‘You’re going to get some money, let’s keep this between ourselves’. He even went on to say, ‘No one will believe you anyway’.”
The prosecutor said Brian Houston had ample opportunity to assure Sengstock he was “not being bribed”, but he gave no such assurance.
“The evidence is overwhelming that the accused wanted to keep at arm’s length from the money because he knew it was hush money,” Harrison said. “The Crown submits it makes no sense otherwise.”
In his closing submissions Boulten said if his client had been charged with concealing a serious indictable offence today, the reluctance of an adult victim to go to police would constitute a specific defence that would allow an immediate acquittal.
“If it’s a reasonable excuse now, it was a reasonable excuse then,” Boulten said.
He said even though it may have been “convenient” for Houston that his father would not be charged, it did not mean that Sengstock’s views did not also factor into his consideration and constitute a reasonable excuse.
“Just because he is ashamed of what his father did, and just because it was going to be a terrible blow to anybody who trusted him to learn about this, and because – to use your honour’s word – it was maybe convenient for it not to be prosecuted ... does not mean [Brian Houston] is without reasonable excuse,” Boulten said.
He said it had been claimed that his client was “the arch architect of a church-wide cover-up” of the elder Houston’s crime “that extended over three or four years”, but such a suggestion was “based on conjecture”.
Boulten said his client was a child when Frank Houston abused Sengstock, and became aware of it when Sengstock was aged in his late 30s, which should not be forgotten.
“Your honour must acquit the accused unless you find beyond reasonable doubt that the attitude of the complainant not wishing to go to the police played no role in my client’s approach,” Boulten said.
Brian Houston said last year that he told his father to stay away from the church after his confession that he had molested the boy, because it had a “one strike and you’re out, no tolerance policy towards paedophiles”.
He said he had been “devastated” and “torn” to tell people within the church what his father had done, but now “I don’t have any respect for him”.
The hearing continues.
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