Megachurch Co-Founder Faces Charges in Child Sexual Abuse Case

Brian Houston, co-founder and senior pastor of the global megachurch Hillsong, was charged by the Australian police Thursday with concealing child sexual abuse carried out by his father in the 1970s, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Houston has denied the allegations stemming from a 2019 criminal investigation into reports that a Hillsong church leader “knowingly concealed information about child sexual assault.”

In 2014, an Australian royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse found that Houston had failed to alert police after his father, Frank Houston, confessed to him in 1999 of sexually abusing a 7-year-old boy decades earlier. Houston said during the royal commission hearings that he had suspended his father from preaching at the church but had not reported his behavior because the victim had asked him not to, a claim that the victim has vehemently denied. Frank Houston established Sydney Christian Life Centre in 1977, which later merged with Hills Christian Life Centre, founded by Brian, to become Hillsong, which surged in popularity in the United States and around the world, attracting celebrities and young people with music and a style of preaching that emphasized positivity. Houston’s father died in 2004 and was never charged.