AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Helen Davidson
theguardian.com, Monday 6 October 2014
The high-profile head of the Hillsong Church, Brian Houston said he was affected in a “personal way” when his father, Frank Houston, admitted in 2000 that he had sexually abused a child 30 years earlier.
The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is examining the responses to allegations of abuse against Frank Houston, a preacher who helped build Australia’s pentecostal movement, as well as allegations against two other men.
Frank Houston, who died in 2004, confessed in 2000 to sexually abusing a boy in New Zealand more than 30 years earlier. He was immediately sacked by his son, who was then national president of the Assemblies of God.
Houston said in a statement on Monday morning that although there were no allegations against him or Hillsong, he had been affected by child sexual abuse “in a very personal way”.
“Having to face the fact that my father engaged in such repulsive acts was – and still is – agonising,” said Houston.
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