![]() Houston has previously described learning of his father’s offending as a devastating moment in his life. In court, he said he had felt unable to speak out against the church: “I was in the moral and spiritual control of Frank and the church”. In court on Monday, Sengstock was asked about his evidence to the royal commission into child abuse and agreed he gave testimony saying he did not want any formal investigation of his abuse, telling the commission he would have been “shattered” if someone had reported his abuse to police without his permission. “He was making it very clear he did not want the police involved.” His defence barrister, Phillip Boulten SC, said when Houston learned of his father’s offending in 1999, the victim was 36 and was “adamant” he did not want a police report filed. Houston contests the details of this phone call, the court heard, saying that allegation “has absolutely no foundation in truth”. He replied: “Quite frankly it was because I was paid for my silence.” In court, Sengstock was asked why he didn’t report his abuse to police. Several weeks later a cheque for $10,000 arrived. Sengstock said Brian Houston responded angrily, “yelling and swearing” before saying “you’ll be getting your money” and hanging up. He told the court he was “deeply hurt” by the comment, and asked Brian Houston if he had also been “molested by Frank”. Sengstock told the court that in that phone call Brian Houston said to him: “You know this is all your fault. Weeks later, Sengstock phoned Brian Houston, asking what had happened to the payment he had been promised by his father. Sengstock signed, but Houston did not pay the money, the court heard. In November 1999, Sengstock met Frank Houston at a McDonald’s in Thornleigh, in Sydney’s north, where he was asked to sign a blank napkin in exchange for $10,000. ![]() Sengstock’s mother told another family member who held a senior position in the church, and senior church officials were also informed of the abuse.Ī church leader wrote to him, saying “the secular courts are not the way to go,” and telling him he would “get a fair hearing” within the church.Ĭonfronted about the abuse, Frank Houston sought to apologise, telling his victim “he needed his forgiveness because he could not die and face God with this on his head”. Sengstock said he didn’t tell anyone else about the alleged abuse, because in the church homosexuality was frowned upon and because he was “anally raped repeatedly by Frank Houston, I felt that I had committed a sin”. 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. ![]() 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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