Hillsong founder Brian Houston to learn fate over allegations he covered up father’s abuse of a boy to police more than two decades ago

Hillsong founder Brian Houston will discover whether he is guilty of a cover-up for failing to report his father’s abuse of a boy to the police more than two decades ago.

The 69-year-old was a child when his father Frank Houston began abusing Brett Sengstock in the 1970s.

Houston later learned of his father’s abuse and confronted him about it.

Frank Houston confessed and was removed from office in late 1999.

Brian Houston shared the news with other members of the national executive within the Assemblies of God churches at an emergency meeting at Sydney airport.

Word of the elder Houston’s confession eventually reached Mr. Sengstock, but he could not remember who told him, telling the court that “gossip was everywhere.”

However, Houston has not reported his father to the police.

He appeared before a local court in early December where he pleaded not guilty to a charge of concealing a serious criminal offense stemming from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Magistrate Gareth Christofi will deliver a ruling in Sydney’s Downing Center local court on Thursday.

Houston’s attorney Phillip Boulten SC previously said Houston believed Mr Sengstock wanted no further action and was by then an adult who could have turned himself in to police.

“To call this a cover-up is a misnomer, it is very unfair,” Mr Boulten told the court.

Rather than cover up his father’s abuse, Houston spoke about it in televised sermons attended by thousands, including the then NSW Police Commissioner, his lawyer said.

Crown Prosecutor Gareth Harrison argued that Houston made “technically correct” statements that were “intended to mislead” when speaking of his father’s abuse, confusing his crimes in Australia with those of others in New Zealand.

The 69-year-old was a child when his father Frank Houston began abusing Brett Sengstock in the 1970s

He relied on the “deep-seated reverence” for his Pentecostal father to control the story and enforce a culture of silence, Harrison said.

The elder Houston continued to preach in churches within the Assemblies of God until weeks before he died in 2004.

Church figures said during the trial that they would never have allowed him to appear before their congregations if they had known he was a pedophile.

Brian Houston resigned from Hillsong in March 2022 after violating the church’s moral code for inappropriate relationships with two women.

In a statement in March this year acknowledging a US drunk driving charge dated February 2022, Houston said he was under “immense pressure and emotional strain” and that it seemed “all hell had broken loose” before he resigned. .