The court heard Brian Houston,now 68,was the most senior member of the Assemblies of God church in Australia at the time the allegation came to light. He was charged last year with concealing a serious indictable offence over his decision not to inform police before his father,who admitted the offence when Houston put it to him in 1999,died five years later.
Houston’s barrister Phillip Boulten,SC,said the actions of Frank Houston,and his client’s knowledge of it,were not in question. Rather,the case would turn on whether the younger Houston had a “reasonable excuse” not to bring the matter to the attention of the police.
Houston’s primary reason for not disclosing his knowledge of the abuse to police,Boulten said,was that Sengstock “did not want to report it”.
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In occasionally emotional testimony on Monday,Sengstock told the court the senior Houston “raped” him when he was seven years old in 1970,while staying with his family in Coogee during a visit to Sydney from New Zealand for church business.
His family was “heavily involved” in the Assemblies of God church,Sengstock said,and it wasn’t until another incident in which Frank “exposed himself” and “masturbated under the table” during a meeting with him that Sengstock told his mother what had happened.
It would be more than a decade again before she would then air his allegation,following a guest sermon at her sister-in-law’s church by a pastor known as “Mad Dog Mudford” – whom Sengstock described in his testimony as a tattooed “bikie” who then turned up at his door,“abusing me”.