Day 10 of the Houston Trial
Beginning the defence case, Brian Houston went into the witness box and after a short history of the Hillsong church, defence counsel Phillip Boulten SC took him through the “dark days” after he discovered his father Frank Houston was a pedophile.
Brian Houston is on trial charged with failing to report his father’s pedophile crimes to the police, without a reasonable excuse.
Asked what “was the first time he got news of his father’s offences, Brian Houston said “I will never forget the day in late 1999 [when] I had a meeting with George Aghajanian [the general manager at the hills church] and at the end of the meeting he said ‘There’s just one more thing. It’s not about you. It’s about your father.’
“He began to blurt out that Kevin Mudford had phoned into the church and got hold of Bill Johnson, one of our pastors, who put the call through to George. George was mentioning Rose, and Coogee. I figured it out. I immediately knew who George was talking about.”
It was Brett Sengstock. Brian Houston knew straight away. Rose was the name of Sengstock’s mother and Coogee was where they lived and where the Houstons had stayed, visiting Sydney from New Zealand.
“How did you feel?” Boulten asked.
“Stunned, would not be strong enough a word,” Brian Houston said. “Because it was individuals I knew, it increased the likelihood there was some truth in this.
“The timeframe made it right. But I had never heard a whisper.”
“On a scale of certainty, where were you when you got the news?” asked Boulten.
“I hoped it wasn’t true,” Brian Houston replied. “But I had a sense it was not going to be good news.”
“Did you tell anybody about it?” Boulten followed up.
“I went home that night and told Bobbie,” Brian Houston answered. “The next day I called John McMartin because his name had come up.”
“Why did you call him?” asked Boulten.
“I was a bit miffed these people had been holding on to a growing story without telling me,” Brian Houston responded. “I asked ‘Why didn’t you confront my father? Or if you didn’t have the courage why not tell me so I could confront him?’ He did not have an answer. He ummed and ahhed.”
“What did you say you were going to do about it?” Boulten asked.
“I told John I had no choice but to tell the national executive about it.”
Brian Houston was then led to correct the record. He had earlier said that his father had been away, and that had delayed any meeting. But having seen his diaries he corrected himself to say he had been away.
On the 19th of November a few days after Brian Houston returned from his trip he confronted his father. “I quickly told him the story of Mudford telling George and that Rose and Coogee were mentioned. That the accusation was the that he had abused Brett. He told me that it had only happened once and that it involved fondling his genitals.”
“Did he apologise?” Boulten asked.
“I don’t remember he apologised to me,” Brian Houston said.
Brian Houston told his father he had “no option but to remove his credentials, he would not be able to preach, or come to Sydney CLC. He accepted the first two but was upset at not going to Sydney CLC.”
Boulten then takes him through the process of first telling his children, his siblings, the board of Sydney CLC and Hills CLC.board. When he told his brothers, they both wanted to check their father had not abused each other. Houston told Boulten that this did mean he had doubts about his father’s truthfulness.
“I told them all the same story, exactly,” Brian Houston said when asked about the SCLC board.
“Including that your father admitted touching a child?” Boulten asked.
“Including fondling a boy’s genitals,” Brian Houston responded.
He talked to Kevin Mudford. “I got his number from Barbara Taylor. I told him I had confronted Frank. He was frustrated because he thought Hillsong had already had the information. He told me about Brett’s emotional state.
“Fragile. The word ‘Brittle’ came up a lot.”
Brian Houston was asked about a meeting he had with Barbara Taylor and John McMartin. “She said Brett was very angry with his mother telling Kevin Medford this information. Brett was extremely fragile emotionally. Brett did not want it escalated within the church. Certainly not to be escalated to what she called the secular authorities.”
He spoke to Rose and Brett on the same day. “He said ‘I don’t want to be part of a big church conversation. You know how gossipy they are.’”
Boulten asked, “What about people outside the church?”
Brian Houston quoting Sengstock: “You are not to go to the police. If anyone is going to the police it will be me. And I won’t be doing that.”
Asked why he called a national executive meeting, Brian Houston responded “I thought it was my responsibility to tell them he had confessed.” Pressed he adds “To do nothing would be covering things up.”
The Police did not read the Herald
Earlier in the day, as police evidence continued, Detective Sergeant Hamill was questioned about what he had not searched for.
Including stories from the Sydney Morning Herald and sermons in which Brian Houston had spoken of his father’s crimes.
But the police presnted records of Ben Fordham grilling Brian Houston on 2GB on October 24, 2019, about the Scott Morrisons’s attempt to invite Brian Houston to the Whitehouse.
Houston had told Fordham that his father “never preached again” after he had confronted him in 1999. But Fordham pressed him about a Joanne McCarthy story in the Newcastle Herald in which the dogged reporter had uncovered the tape of the sermon Frank Houston had preached in Maitland in 2004 (and which was played to the Court earlier this week.)
“I have never heard of that,” Brian Houston told Fordham. “If he did that, he did it behind my back.”
Describing his father as suffering from dementia at that time, he added “If he did it I am glad I was not there to hear it” referring to the likelihood of his father rambling.
“This is brand new news to me.” Brian Houston told the interviewer. Pressed about Pastor Robert Cotton of the Maitland Church saying that he had been kept in the dark, Brian Houston said “I knew 100 per cent that he knew that. He was angry with me that I had been too hard on my father.”
“Your father can be heard pointing out attractive boys in the congregation saying ‘you can’t hep being good looking.’” Fordham said.
Brian Houston points out that knowledge of Frank Houston’s offending was widespread. ”By 2004 our whole church at Hillsong was aware of what he had been accused of.”
And the Cross-examination of Detective Hamill turned on whether the police had found what Brain Houston had been saying about his father at the relevant time.
The detective was asked whether he had followed up a handwritten note by pastor Barbara Taylor about who in 1998 knew about the allegation. The police had not followed up all the names on that list.
In particular, they had also not checked the archives of the Sydney Morning Herald. “You need to be careful what you read in the newspaper,” the witness told the court after being shown an article by Kelly Burke dated March 27, 2002.
“Presumably you have never read an article by Greg Bearup in the Sydney Morning Herald supplement the Good Weekend from January 25, 2003?” Boulten asked. He quoted Brian Houston as telling the Bearup “Finding out that his father had abused a child back in New Zealand was like jets flying into the twin towers of my soul.”
“The fact that it was in a newspaper that Brian Houston had said Frank Houston had abused a child was a relevant fact.”
“In New Zealand.” The detective responded.
“You did not know about this article until today?”
“Yes.”
Boulten asked, “During your investigation did you become aware that Brian Houston had told people associated with his church about his father’s child sexual abuse?”
“I don’t think it was a s clear as that,” Hamill responded.
“He certainly told people in the church about the topic?” Boulten asked.
“Generally, yes” the witness conceded.
Boulten: “Were you aware the accused [Brian Houston] made comments about child sexual abuse?”
Hamill: “About Sengstock?”
Boulten: “About child sexual abuse.”
Boulten read from the Ben Fordham interview and asks “So you knew he had said something about his father [in church]?’
Hamill: “I don’t think he was saying anything about the Sengstock allegation.”
Boulten: “I asked did you know precisely what he said in church? You never checked”
Hamill: “that’s right.”
The next witness, Detective Senior Constable April Bruce was questioned about the processor obtaining Rose Hartingham’s diaries and the search for bank details about the money Frank Houston paid to his victim Brett Sengstock. She was the final witness for the prosecution.