He said he was frightened of his mother when he told her, and that she ultimately responded by saying she didn’t want to be responsible for turning in people from the church because it would be “like a mortal sin”. “I knew I was in trouble,” he told the court, claiming his family were usually strict with him and that he had previously “received bashings every day in accordance with their religion”. He said he then told his mother that Houston had been “molesting” him for several years, and that she went “dead silent”. Sengstock told the court that when he visited Houston, the pastor was masturbating under the table, and that he ran out of the centre and went home. He went to Houston’s office at the Christian Life Centre in central Sydney. He said that years later, as a teenager, he was sent by his mother to Houston for counselling, because he was “running off the road with the law”. He told the court that following the first incident in January 1970 he was “repeatedly” raped by Frank Houston. At night, he came into Sengstock’s room and sexually assaulted him while he was sleeping, placing his hands on his genitals, masturbating him and inserting a finger into his anus.īrett Sengstock was the first witness called on Monday. In an opening statement, crown prosecutor Gareth Harrison told the court that in January 1970 Frank Houston, then a pastor with the Assemblies of God church, was visiting Sydney and stayed with the Sengstock family for a week. Sengstock has since waived his right to anonymity as a victim of child sexual abuse. Houston has repeatedly maintained he did not report the allegation to police because Sengstock did not want that to happen. His trial, before magistrate Gareth Christofi, is set down for three weeks.
#HILLSONG PASTOR DIES COVID TRIAL#
Brian Houston’s father, Frank Houston, repeatedly raped and assaulted a young church member, Brett Sengstock, beginning when the boy was seven years old, in 1970.īrian Houston is on trial for failing to report the abuse to police after his father confessed in 1999 to sexually assaulting the boy.īrian Houston has pleaded not guilty to one count of concealing a serious indictable offence of another person.
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