Houston, Senior Global Pastor of Hillsong is charged with “Conceal serious indictable offence of another person” which concerns child sexual abuse that occurred in the 1970s, which he became aware of in 1999. He has pleaded not guilty via his lawyer.

The perpetrator was Frank Houston, Brian Houston’s father. The elder Houston abused a number of children in his native New Zealand, but the case before the court concerns the abuse of Australian survivor Brian Sengstock as a young boy.

Brian Houston, who was then state president of the Australian Christian Churches, headed the team that dealt with the abuse internally, defrocking the senior Houston, and banning him from preaching.

The case follows the finding of the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that Houston had failed to report his father’s crime to the state authorities.