Brian Houston maintains it was the ‘right thing’ not to report father’s abuse

Hillsong founder Brian Houston believes he did the “right thing” not going to police after his father told him he had molested an underage boy three decades earlier.

Houston maintains it was the victim’s explicit wish not for the incident to be made public or for there to be an investigation by authorities.

Brian Houston arrives at the Downing Centre local court on Wednesday.Credit:Nikki Short

“What I was committed to was [the victim’s] wishes, not betraying him and his wishes,” Houston told a court hearing on Wednesday.

“I believe we did the right thing, that I personally did the right thing.”

Frank Houston admitted abusing the boy at a home in Sydney’s Coogee in 1970, which he confessed to his son in 1999.

Houston pleaded not guilty to a charge of concealing the crime until his father’s death in 2004.

After learning about the crime, Houston informed a meeting of the church’s national executive who banned Frank Houston from preaching, however no effort was made to tell the police or broader public.

The court heard earlier this week that $12,000 was also paid to the victim as a form of informal compensation, however, Houston stressed the money was not paid to keep the victim quiet or prevent him from going to the police in the future.

Under cross-examination on Wednesday, Houston was grilled about the contents of a sermon he gave to hundreds of worshippers at the Hillsong Church Hills Campus in 2002.

Crown prosecutor Gareth Harrison put to Houston he had “sanitised” his father’s deeds to protect the church from scandal, which he denied.

Houston told the congregation he had confronted his father about the accusations which led to “certain confessions” about “issues”, according to a transcript of the sermon read in part to Downing Centre Local Court.

“You haven’t said what the confessions were. You haven’t even said what the issues are,” Harrison said.

“It’s true that I didn’t talk about the specifics of exactly what Frank had done to the whole congregation,” Houston replied.

During the 2002 sermon, Houston also stated: “My dad, he loves God. He still loves God. He’s still in the word.”

Harrison suggested: “What you were really saying was ‘despite this part of his life that got out of hand, he’s still a good man’.”

Houston said it was “not necessarily” his intention of conveying that to the congregation.

It was suggested by Harrison that Houston had chosen the words of the sermon carefully in order to disguise the truth.

“Here you are … telling your congregation that someone had called the church and made a very serious moral accusation against your father,” Harrison said.

“You’re trying to fool them into thinking this was a serious allegation, but not an allegation about child sexual assault.”

“I never tried to fool the congregation,” Houston said.

Earlier this week, Houston told the court how difficult it was for him to talk about his father’s crimes and how he struggled for years to use the word “paedophile” to describe him.

“I found it tremendously difficult every time I had to tell the story again,” Houston explained.

The hearing will resume in June.

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