Hillsong founder Brian Houston found not guilty of covering up father’s sexual abuse

The Hillsong founder has been found not guilty of covering up that his father Frank molested a boy in the 1970s after he failed to report the sexual abuse to the police.

Brian Houston on Thursday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nikki Short

Hillsong founder Brian Houston says he’s saddened people were hurt by his serial pedophile father but says he’s relieved after a court found him not guilty of covering up his dad’s crimes.

Outside Sydney’s Downing Centre on Thursday, Mr Houston said the extent of offending by his father, the late evangelical pastor Frank Houston, would likely never be known.

“He (Frank Houston) was obviously a serial pedophile,” he said.

“We will probably never know the extent of his pedophilia (and) a lot of people have been hurt, and for that I am very sad.

“But, I am not my father. I did not commit this offence. I feel relief that the truth has come out.”

Mr Houston had pleaded not guilty to charges brought over the failure to report his father to police, after learning of the abuse in 1999, until the late pastor’s death in 2004.

Earlier on Thursday, Magistrate Gareth Christofi found Mr Houston had not reported his father to police due to the wishes expressed by abuse victim Brett Sengstock, who the late Houston confessed to abusing in the 1970s.

“That being the case, one of the elements of the offence before the court remains unproven and the verdict therefore must be not guilty,” he said.

Frank Houston was close friends with Mr Sengstock’s parents and abused the then-seven-year-old at the family’s home in Coogee in the 1970s.

During the trial, Mr Sengstock told the court he first disclosed the abuse to his mother, Rose Hardingham, at the age of 16.

In November 1998, Ms Hardingham informed fellow Hillsong members Barbara Taylor and Kevin Madford. The information made its way to Mr Houston.

In 2002, Mr Houston referenced the abuse during a Hillsong conference in Sydney and told the crowd he was left numb when he learnt his father, his hero, was accused of historical sexual abuse.

“The best way I can describe it, it was like jets flying into the twin towers of my soul,” he said in video played during the trial.

The prosecution’s case relied on a number of factors, including that Mr Houston had hidden his father’s crimes to protect the church and that he had downplayed the abuse in public speeches.

During the trial, Mr Houston said he had held meetings with church leaders where he disclosed the abuse and said he could have been more explicit in speeches.

Handing down his judgment on Thursday, Mr Christofi said Mr Houston’s conduct had been “the exact opposite of a cover-up” “While the accused may have been euphemistic at times when speaking to large gatherings of 1000s of people, it would have been perfectly obvious to anyone what he was talking about,” he said.

The allegations against Mr Houston emerged from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the Hillsong founder stepped down as head of the international megachurch in February last year.

He resigned in March 2022 after an internal investigation found he had acted inappropriately with two women and alcohol and drugs had been involved.

Shortly after the verdict on Thursday, Mr Houston posted a video to Instagram in which he said it had been two years since he had been charged, nine years since the royal commission and 25 years of persecution. “Today the judgment was overwhelmingly supportive of not guilty – to the point where the judge said what I did was the exact opposite of a cover up,” he said.

Additional reporting: NCA Newswire