(Image: Private Media)

It’s hard to know what is the most startling information to emerge from the extraordinary revelations made at last Friday’s all-staff Hillsong meeting, called to address mounting rumours around the behaviour of Pastor Brian Houston, as reported here by Crikey, drawing on a leaked audio recording.

Is it the disclosure that the church needed an “integrity unit” — so-called by senior pastor Phil Dooley — to check on the behaviour of its most prominent pastor? The National Rugby League has one… but a church?

Is it that the six-member “integrity unit” was composed almost entirely of men, most of whom are long-serving Hillsong figures with history with the Houston family stretching back decades? The unit, of course, was checking on claims brought by a woman about what happened over a 40-minute period in her hotel room after Houston knocked on her door, apparently confused by a combination of drink and prescription drugs.

Is it the inference that Brian Houston has only ever committed two transgressions with women, once in 2013 and once in 2019? The meeting held last Friday heard that a woman was aggrieved enough to complain and resign over text messages in 2013, and that the woman from the 2019 incident was similarly aggrieved and also took her complaint to management. So to believe that Hillsong has now come clean, we have to believe that Brian Houston’s only transgressions happened to be with women who had the courage and determination to go ahead with a complaint.

Is it that Hillsong thought it could float the idea that it was the sleeping tablets (in 2013) and the anxiety medication (in 2019) that played a role in Houston acting the way he did — and that he wasn’t really responsible?

Is it that Hillsong will solve serious claims of impropriety and push problems under the rug by paying some money to a complainant — and not much of it? The female staff member who resigned in 2013 was given two months’ salary to go and get on with her life. In the early 2000s Hillsong paid the princely sum of $12,000 to the victim of Frank Houston’s sexual abuse — a deal done in a McDonald’s restaurant.

Is it that Hillsong thought it was a sign of Brian Houston’s personal integrity that he paid money to the two women out of his own pocket rather than out of Hillsong funds?

Is it that Hillsong appears to have an ingrained culture of concealing and minimising serious allegations of sexual abuse and/or predatory sexual behaviour from the top?

Many of the men who were aware of and handled the allegations of sexual abuse of young boys made against Brian Houston’s father, Frank, in 2000 have carried on with senior roles in the church. The senior church figure who was party to paying off a man who was abused as a boy by Frank Houston was also part of the secret 2013 investigation into Houston’s inappropriate texts to the woman.

And how is it that the 2013 text incident — in which Brian Houston said he would “kiss and cuddle” a female staff member if they were together — ended up with the woman in question being paid off, without anyone else outside a close circle around Houston knowing for close to a decade?

Hillsong promoted last week’s all-staff meeting as the moment it would dispel the rumours and put forward the truth.  

Yet that hasn’t happened. Far from it.

Instead it has led to more disillusionment, and it has powered a momentum for generational change and an overhaul of the Hillsong culture, particularly in relation to how it treats women. 

Will there be a role for the Houstons in the future? Hillsong has been a family enterprise since its inception with Brian Houston, his high-profile wife Bobbie and son Ben, who sits on the church’s global board.

But if Hillsong thinks it has drawn a line under the Houston scandals, it may well be mistaken. It’s hard to imagine there isn’t more to come.

If you have information about this story please contact David Hardaker via dhardaker@protonmail.com.