It may have been the first time that a person speaking in tongues had been quoted in an NSW Court. Quoting the tongues speaking by Frank Houston during his 2004 sermon in Maitland Christian Church, Crown Prosecutor Gareth Harrison questioned Pastor Robert Cotton about the sermon.
“It should not be confused with inherent babble,” Cotton said, going on the describe Frank Houston’s tongues-speaking as something that Pentecostals do.
Pentecostals do not exposit Scripture verse by verse, Cotton explained but “A Pentecostal service will have speaking in tongues and telling stories, tying them to spiritual truths.
“A Pentecostal service can appear to be like a madhouse and Frank Houston’s sermons were often like this.”
Parents had bought their children to the front of the service and Frank Houston had laid hands on them.
Harrison took Pastor Cotton through the events of 2000 onwards. Attempts to get Frank Houston to speak at his Maitland church were not successful in 2000, and 2001 when Cotton was keen to have him back.
“There was no response to my requests to Judith McGee [Frank Houston’s daughter.]” But Cotton had lunch with Frank Houston several times leading up to the sermon in 2004. Harrison asked about whether Frank Houston appeared to have deteriorated on each occasion. Each time the witness said Frank Houston appeared to be fine.
Cotton was asked whether anything was said to him that Frank Houston’s credential had been withdrawn at several meetings he attended, including one at which Reinhold Bonnke – a famous evangelist – spoke at the Hills church., and at a state executive conference for the Assemblies of God (AOG).
“I attended all meetings. Nothing was mentioned.”
The letter from the Assemblies of God national executive announcing that Frank Houston’s ministerial credentials had been withdrawn permanently became the focus of sharp questioning.
Cotton read it in the first week of 2002. “Yes, I still have my copy,” he told Harrison.
The letter said that Frank Houston had been the subject of a “serious allegation”, “permanently removed from all public ministry” and had committed “serious moral failure.”
Ministers were advised not to allow Frank Houston to engage in public ministry.
“To be honest it was a bit of a mystery,” Cotton said when asked by Harrison about his reaction. “It told you something and nothing at the same time.”
Asked what the reason for Frank Houston’s credentials to be withdrawn might have been, Cotton listed “Looking at pornography, visiting a brothel, homosexuality.” But “there was no way a person could have been seriously considering child rape.”’”
Cotton said he took it to be a reference to a case that Phillip Powell (an Assemblies of God minister who had questioned Frank Houston’s integrity over some years,) had revealed where an incident of “a pat on the bum” was taken to be a homosexual incident.
“It was a gag order,” Cotton said of the letter from the national executive which he had read in early 2002. “We were expected to shut up.” Instead, he did announce Frank Houston losing his ministerial credential to his congregation despite the national executive letter telling ministers not to do that. He told the court he used the words in the letter, “moral failure” or “serious moral failure” he could not recall which.
Describing himself as “perplexed,’Cotton put himself in a “difficult situation” when he made inquiries with Hazel Houston (Frank’s wife) . He phoned. “Hazel answered and said ‘what letter.’ I told her we had received a letter saying Frank Houston’s credentials had been removed.
“I could not see why Frank’s credential could not be returned. Child sexual assault was out of the park. We thought it was a Catholic problem.” A moral failure could have been something forgivable, he thought. “I did not think it was anything criminal.”
He also rang Marty McCrindle a former member of the state executive, who told him that he could not give Cotton any more information and that he just had to accept what the letter said.
In cross-examining Cotton, Phillip Boulten SC for the defence began by establishing that Cotton understood that Frank Houston’s credentials had been permanently removed. “Yes, sir” Cotton responded. But he said because his church was autonomous “It was up to me who I put behind the pulpit.”
Asking why Cotton had sought and later allowed Frank Houston to preach Boulten said to Cotton, “You knew the highest body of the AOG [Assemblies of God] had permanently removed Frank Houston from ministry. Do you see inviting him to preach the same as inviting a worthy eminent pastor from a different church?”
“No reasonable explanation had been given,” “we’d had a long-standing arrangement with Frank Houston. We had to blindly submit to a cover-up of a child sexual offence.” Cotton responded.
Exploring Cotton’s loyalty to Frank Houston, Boulten asked “Frank Houston said he had been sacked for underhanded reasons so Brian could steal his church from him?” In a later question, he quoted Frank Houston as saying “Seven million reasons why he stole my church.”
“That’s what Frank Houston said,” Cotton responded.
Boulten asks: “You thought the church was set against your friend [Frank Houston] because of politics, rivalry and greed?”
“Yes,” Cotton responds.
The letter from the national executive also dealt with another case of a minister’s moral failure, but the credentials of this younger man were only temporarily removed. Cotton recounted that Hazel Houston thought this was particularly unfair. ”Its a stitch-up by Brian Houston, Frank Houston told me that.” Cotton said.
“Did that colour your view?” Boulten asked.
“Yes,“ said Cotton.
Asked whether the higher penalty (permanent removal of his credential) given to Frank Houston was on the basis of what he had done Cotton said “I could not make a decision.”
As described to Harrison, Cotton told his congregation that Frank Houston’s credentials had been removed. Asked why, he told Boulten “the Bible tells us that when senior leadership sins they should be publicly rebuked”
“Did you rebuke him?” Boulten shot back.
In fact, Cotton did not. He testified that Hazel Houston told him that Frank was badly depressed and not to talk to him about the letter. So during the dozen or so times, he met Frank Houston after that, or in many phone calls, he did not raise the matter.
When Cotton visited the Houstons Hazel described national executive members John Lewis and Keith Ainge listing them in Beecroft after the men returned from investigations in New Zealand. “Hazel told me John Lewis was cruel and stormed out. Hazel had been expecting a pastoral visit. “She was complaining that Frank had been cut out of the AOG,” Cotton told Boulten.
Cotton denied reading a Sydney Morning Herald article by Kelly Burke that said that Frank Houston had committed offences so serious that his credential had been removed or a 2003 Good Weekend piece that ”included a suggestion by a journalist that Frank Houston had confessed to being a pedophile.”
Asked why he had put Frank Houston in his pulpit in 2004, Cotton said “Mt attitude was that they had not given satisfactory reasons, and both Frank and Hazel had said that he had been treated unfairly.”
Boulten followed up “Do you think that it would have been good to ring John Lewis?”
Cotton laughed. “John Lewis would not have taken a phone call from me. He was an A grader.”
Boulten: “What about Brian Houston? He was an A grader too?”
Cotton: “Brian Houston would not have taken a call from me.”
Boulten asked Cotton if he was told in April 2001 that what Frank Houston had done was a crime.
“That was by Ivan Herald… he was a former member of the ACC national executive. I took it to mean that Frank had been involved in homosexuality.”
Boulten: “You were also told by Brian Houston?”
Cotton: “No, sir.”
In a telling moment, Boulten asks about the number plates from Frank Houston’s car, CLC 777. Cotton, still admiring Frank Houston bought them. He got rid of them after the Royal Commission.
The next witness, Gregory Morris, had been responsible for child protection at Coastlife church in Gosford under Ian Zerna when Frank and Hazel attended the church. He testified that he had been given responsibility for working out what the new child protection legislation had meant for staff and volunteers.
He said Zerna had never discussed the letter from the national executive about removing Frank Houston from public ministry until after Frank Houston’s funeral.
“I have a clear memory of Ian Zerna having Frank Houston take part in church services,” he said. “I have a clear memory of three or four occasions on which this happened.” Morris said that Frank Houston preached and participated in prayer ministry on those occasions.
“If Pastor Ian Zerna had known Pastor Frank Houston was accused of child sexual abuse I would have expected he would have made it known to the leadership,” Morris said when asked by Harrison if there had been any restrictions on Frank Houston.
Pressed by Boulten about it being publicly known by the middle of 2002 that Frank Houston had been accused of sexual abuse, Morris said “there are dozens of AOG pastors stood down for sexual abuse. With adults, not children.”
After a conversation with Zerna after Frank Houston’s funeral “I walked away with the impression of sexual abuse with an adult.”
“Sexual abuse is not adultery,” Boulten put to the witness.
“In church, there is a power imbalance,” Morris responded. “So we call a minister having an affair, abuse.’
The first of the police witnesses, Detective Sergeant Andrew Hamil was called. Crown Prosecutor Harrison took him through the investigation process with a 2019 amendment to federal law allowing police access to the non-public documents of the Royal Commission.
A series of media clips gathered by the police was played to the court.
The first was an interview with Brian Houston from the ABC Australian Story episode “Life of Brian” from August 2004. “My father had abused someone under the age of 16.”
An interview with Ben Fordham on 2GB in October 2014. “Why didn’t you go straight to the police?” “We’ve got a survivor who is adamant that they don’t want any kind of church investigation our police investigation… rightly or wrongly I assumed it was his prerogative.”
“Is your dad in heaven or hell?” “That is a big one. I would like to think he is heaven… He died a depressed man, so full of regret. He knew he had destroyed the life of others. I think if he went to God, God would have forgiven him.”
A New York press Conference in October 2014. “It was the darkest day of my life. He was my hero and then he was a pedophile.”
“He never preached again,” Brian Houston said.
Asked what he would change, Brian Houston points to the conflict of interest issue and going to the police. “I didn’t know it then. I know it now.”
An interview for “Inside Story” in 2019. Recounting the meeting at which George Aghajanian told him about the allegations. “Within a split second I am thinking ‘that’s immoral’. Within a split second I am thinking ‘that’s criminal.'”
“The sad thing is that I remember him [Brett Sengstock] when I was a kid. He was a happy-go-lucky kid, looked like a surfer. I felt sad for him. I still feel sad for him.”
“I have to admit. Ignorance is no excuse. I had no idea I or any of the others should have gone to the police.