Tag: trial

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Brian Houston Claims Sex-Abuse Victim Begged Him Not to Report Father’s Abuse+ New Revelations

Former Global Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church, Brian Houston, testified in court Friday that his father’s abuse victim, Brian Sengstock, begged him not to report it to police or authorities, a wish he says he honored and a claim the victim vehemently rejects, after Sengstock’s mother made the abuse known.

Houston is on trial responding to charges that he concealed sexual abuse by his deceased father more than 30 years ago. He was made aware of the allegations in 1999, five years before his father passed, but did not go to the police and turn his father in. He has pled ‘not guilty’ and, if convicted, faces five years in prison.

Houston described the meeting where he confronted his father, saying it was “tense” and “awkward” and lasted around 45 minutes.

“He simply said ‘that did happen’…He told me it only happened once, he told me it involved fondling his genitals. He was, I think, a mix of embarrassed, humiliated, shamed, remorseful.”

As a result of the confession, Houston told his father that he would not be able to attend church at Hillsong anymore, then known as Sydney Christian Life Centre.

He asked why, and I told him we have a ‘one strike and you’re out, no tolerance policy’ towards pedophiles, and it can’t be any different for you than it is for anyone else.”

He reiterated several times that Sengstock did not want any of this reported, describing him as “paranoid” that he might be identified.

(Mr Sengstock) was very dogmatic that he didn’t want the police involved… He said ‘you are not to go to the police’. He said ‘if anyone’s going to go to the police, it’ll be me and I don’t want to do that’.

I told him that I had no option but to disclose it to the national executive of the Assemblies of God and then his demeanor changed. He got angry, sort of panicky. And he said ‘I don’t want to be part of some big church investigation’.

He said ‘I don’t want my name splashed all over the church, you know how gossipy they all are’….He said ‘if strangers from the church try to contact me I won’t talk to them, I’ll deny it, I’ll hang up’. He was just very blunt and clear he didn’t want to be having any conversation with any people from the church. He was very concerned about his anonymity.”

The trial continues Monday.

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News

Frank Houston, Despite Being Defrocked, Kept Preaching Till He Died (Contradicting Son’s Testimony)

Brian Houston says his father never preached again after he took away his credentials. (Bianca De Marchi/AAP PHOTOS)

Despite Hillsong’s Brian Houston stripping his father of his ministry credentials after discovering he molested at least one seven-year-old boy, the elder Frank Houston continued to preach and teach unabated, delivering sermons until his death, according to court testimony.

In 1999, Houston took away his dad’s preaching credentials. This was told to Assembly of God leaders, who met in secret and decided not to make the shocking confession public, providing in part that the pedophile pastor never preached again. In multiple interviews, Brian Houston testified to this fact that his father never preached again until he died in 2004.

This morning, the court heard that Frank Houston was still preaching at the Hunter Valley Christian Life Centre eight weeks before his death and would occasionally lead prayer over those attending the services. The church’s pastor Robert Cotton said he was unaware of the child sex abuse and that if he had known, he would have never let him preach in 2004, saying:

“There’s no way in the world I would have had him back in the church. I wouldn’t have had him near any of the kids in the church. I wouldn’t have had him around my son who was in the church.”

In audio from the 2004 sermon, Frank can be observed commenting on a child’s looks:

“This curly haired little man here … But what a fantastic young fellow he is, curly hair, sort of. Good looking. It’s not your fault you’re good looking. So thank God you are. Who wants to be ugly when you can be good looking.”

The trial continues.

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News

Trial Watch: Meeting Where Brian Hillsong Revealed Dad’s Pedophilia Kept Secret, Minutes Kept Hidden

After Brian Houston’s dad, Frank, admitted to molesting a 7-year-old boy, Houston called a meeting between Assemblies of God leaders, who all agreed to keep the details a secret, the court was told.

Brian Houston is currently facing five years in prison for “concealing a serious indictable offense of another person” for not turning in his father to the police after the confession, instead keeping quiet about the matter until his father’s death five years later.

According to Keith Ainge, then the Assemblies of God secretary in 1999, denominational leaders met at Sydney Qantas Club in 199 after a frantic request from Houston, who was then the denomination’s National President. Ainge explained that after making the announcement, Houston recused himself but not before explaining that the victim, Brett Sengstock, did not want anyone to know what happened, and the matter kept quiet, a charge Sengstock has vehemently denied in court.

“(Brian’s) father had admitted that he had behaved inappropriately, and so he immediately suspended his credential, which was his prerogative as the national president.”

There was some talk about consulting a lawyer and telling the police, but ultimately the ydecided against it, believing that Houston had already spoken to a lawyer and believing Houston’s claim about Senstock’s request for silence.

AOG VP John Lewis requested that the meeting’s minutes be kept hidden, on account of the sensitive nature of the situation, and that they be kept in a secret file so that parishioners couldn’t just discover and read them. The rest of the participants agreed.

A day prior, Sengstock aunt, Barbar Taylor, told the court that after she confronted Brian Houston about what his dad had done, Houston told her not to put anything in writing and that if she wanted to discuss it, to only talk to him about it and only on the phone.

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Coronavirus Evangelical Stuff Featured In-person Church News Righteous Defiance

GraceLife Church Trial Concludes – Now Comes the Wait

A church service that took place at GraceLife Church on Dec. 13, 2020, in Spruce Grove, Alta., is shown in this handout image taken by an inspector with Alberta Health Services and provided by Alberta's provincial court. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Provincial Court of Alberta *

The GraceLife Church trial concluded yesterday, with a big focus on day two being on whether or not Pastor James Coates was being punished and penalized by the province for making remarks critical of them, as well as whether the public health orders designed to slow the spread of COVID-19 violated the pastor’s charter rights to freedom of expression, to have worship, and to assemble.

During the trial, Coates’ defense sought to find a causal link between the initial ticket he received and the December 20 sermon he preached that was critical of the how Premier Jason Kenney’s government and Alberta Health Services (AHS) were handling the pandemic, with lawyer James Kitchen suggesting that not only did the COVID-19 restrictions infringe on his freedom to practice religion and the exercise thereof, but it violated his freedom of expression.

We know how important this is to Christians as soon as you look at any history in the Middle Ages or Roman times when the church was born…gathering in person was fundamental.

The defense argued that for weeks it was clear that their church was violating capacity limits and social distancing restrictions in the church, which were capped at 15%. During this time police officers and AHS inspectors visited the church on numerous occasions and stayed the whole time, but never issued any tickets.

It wasn’t until December 20th when Coates peached a sermon critical of the government that they received a ticket – something they find unlikely to be a coincidence.

“The purpose of the December 20th ticket was to censor, was to penalize. “Why? Because that particular morning he preached a sermon critical of government. It was to send a message that you better stop criticizing the government.”

Kitchen pointed out that up until that critical sermon, it was perfectly clear they were violating the shutdown laws, noting: “It was clear the 15 percent was exceeded long before he preached (that sermon). “Why issue the ticket after?”

He just preached a sermon that’s critical of the government, which is different than the other Sundays that RCMP and (Alberta Health Services) has shown up.

The best explanation for why that ticket was issued that particular Sunday after the sermon was preached because it’s meant to impose a chilling effect on pastor Coates. It was to send a message…’You better stop criticizing the government for what they’re doing.’

Prosecutor Karen L. Thorsrud shot back that there was no way they could prove that the ticket was granted on the basis of that critical sermon and that there was no evidence authorities interrupted the service or interfered with his ability to preach and pastor when they ticketed him initially. They had just simply had enough. In fact, she points out that he had live-streamed his services and was perfectly capable of doing it online, noting, “There are ways in which they can conduct all of these freedoms,” she said. “They chose not to.”

And thus concluded the trial, at least for the time being.

Now the judge has to determine if Coates’ rights were violated or not. If he determines that they were, he’ll have to decide what remedy the pastor is entitled to, along with forcing the Crown to prove that they were justified in violating his rights under Section 1 of the Charter.

The judge has over a month to make that determination, with the trial picking up again on June 7th where Judge Shaigec will give his ruling.

As the trial concluded, Erin Coates wrote on Instagram:

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Featured In-person Church News Righteous Defiance

Day 1 of the GraceLife Church Trial: ‘Compliance with AHS Meant Noncompliance with God’

Pastor James Coates took the stand behind a clear plexiglass barrier yesterday, choosing to affirm his oath rather than swearing on a bible that he would tell the whole truth in regards to his one count of violating the Public Health Act while leading services at GraceLife Church.

During the course of the day, Coates stated that the province’s shutdown restrictions which cap his church capacity and insist on a host of uncomfortable and onerous remediations were an infringement of his and his congregants’ constitutional right to freedom of religion and peaceful assembly. He further argued that that the threat from the novel coronavirus was exaggerated, describing COVID-19 as a “so-called pandemic” and told the court “I don’t believe that COVID-19 poses a serious health risk to our people.”

He said the government was taking advantage of the situation and drastically blowing it out of proportion: “The government was capitalizing on the crisis to usher in an agenda that would transform the society as we know it…The real threat is AHS and its public health orders.”

It was revealed that while two members of GraceLife caught the virus early on, they ended up fine. He said that for the last 37 weeks, they’ve had no cases that they are aware of, even as they added hundreds of new people.

During cross-examination the prosecutor challenged this claim, arguing that he couldn’t prove that no one had gotten sick in all those months “You wouldn’t know whether someone was sick or not?” She said that some cases were asymptomatic and that James himself had questioned whether or not these tests were even reliable to begin with, and so he could have no way of knowing if that were true.

One thing that was made clear was that Coates took exception government’s handling of the whole affair, venting:

It’s the government that’s practicing civil disobedience and, at this point in time, there seems to be no accountability.

The government has been able to essentially do whatever it wants and you’ve got the media that just fearmonger the people into believing the COVID narrative, and the supreme law of the land, the Charter, is being ignored. The long-term ramifications of that toward this promising country are deeply concerning to me.”

Coates took the opportunity to reinforce the commandment of Acts 5:29 that says ‘We musts serve God rather than men:’

We determined that complying with AHS meant non-compliance with God so we decided, ‘OK, well, who would you rather be (in) noncompliance with? God, or AHS?’ And I think the choice is pretty simple.

While Coates testified a large portion of the day, Crown Prosecutor Karen L Thorsrud called only one witness: Janine Hanrahan with Alberta Health Services. She testified that during several of her visits in November and December of 2020 she observed multiple examples of risky behavior, such as no masks and no social distancing. She further testified that she made recommendations to him such as to use sanitizer, wear masks, having proper signage, and separate doors for entering and exiting the church, none of which were implemented.

Hanrahan also testified that during one of her inspection visits she overheard pastor Coates telling an RCMP officer that Alberta’s chief medical officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, was a “dictator” and that “Premier Jason Kenney was hiding behind her.” [Fact Check: True]

While being questioned she sought to downplay how intrusive her presence was to the church, while Lawyers for Coates painted it as a distraction.

According to a press release by the JCCF

“Lawyer Leighton Grey represents Pastor Coates and Grace Life Church, and cross-examined Ms. Hanrahan, asking the AHS bureaucrat why she took RCMP officers with her to the church. Notes from an RCMP officer indicate that Ms. Hanrahan told police that she feared being harmed by going to the church, but admitted on the stand that she did not have concerns that someone from church would harm her. Ms. Hanrahan then said that bringing the RCMP was because of media attention.”

For the church though, they wish it had never come to this, despite the prosecutor’s hints that attendance had gone up since they took their stance, suggesting their defiance was self-serving in order to grow. Coates denied this completely, lamenting:

We never wanted this public position that we’ve been given. It came to us. We’d happily resign all of it to be able to worship quietly on Sundays without all this attention.

The trial resumes today.

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Evangelical Stuff Featured

Kyle J. Howard Films Himself Crying and Then Shares it Because of Attention

Though he promised to step away from social media several days ago, Kyle J. Howard stuck around just long enough to subject himself to fresh rounds of trauma porn and self-flagellation, compliments of the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial.

The news caused Howard, who was last seen squalling at the brightening moon because it was causing “erasure” of the night, to share with the world how overcome he was. He took some selfies of his teary, scrunched up and teary face and posted them online, an act effectively no different than white girls taking pictures of their avocado toast and sharing it on Instagram – likely done with the same motivation.

Howard needs some attention, and how better than some good old-fashioned virtue-twerking?

We can only hope that now that he’s got it out of his system, that he stays offline for a while, free to continually promulgate race-baiting invectives within the confines and privacy of his own imagination. [Editor’s note: …instead of inflicting it on ours…]

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Critical Race Theory Featured Social Justice Wars

Russell Moore Makes Derek Chauvin’s Guilty Verdict About Race

Russell Moore, the head of the Ethics and Religious and Liberty Commission (ERLC) who recently took a personal hit when he was torched by the SBC’s Executive Committee for the way he runs his organization, summarized by the phrase, “The direction of the ERLC is a significant source of division and creates a very real challenge to reversing CP [Cooperative Program] decline,” continued his trend of sowing discord and division with a tweet about the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict.

Because Moore is a progressive and a Democrat he can’t help but bring race into it, even though the trial itself did not touch on it or make that a factor in the death of George Floyd.

In fact, by all accounts, there was absolutely nothing racist about the entire encounter, which would not stop him from noting in a later post that Floyd is a “symbol of the quest for racial justice in this country,” and that because Chauvin was found guilty, we can “work together for a new era of racial justice.” And yet we ask: what was racial about this justice?

We haven’t forgotten about this statement Moore and the who’s-who of SBC leaders signed back in 2020:

Furthermore, don’t believe Moore will make it a habit of celebrating our judicial system as ERLC head or supporting various jury decisions. He only celebrates certain kinds of decisions. He would never dare being caught speaking on cases like the Michael Brown or George Zimmerman case and declaring that “justice was rendered.”

You think the cowardly Moore, author of the laughably ironic The Courage to Stand would say that justice was rendered if Chauvin’s conviction is overturned on appeal – an act that ought to happen based on his lack of fair trial?

Not a chance.

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Evangelical Stuff Featured In-person Church Righteous Defiance

Breaking! Pastor James Coates Release Delayed…and not Guaranteed

The family of James Coates and congregants of GraceLife Church will have to wait a bit longer to see their beloved spouse, father, and pastor, with news that James’ hearing won’t be until Monday morning the 22nd at 9:30am, rather than sometime Friday morning, which many had hoped.

The news comes from wife Erin, who likewise explained that even though the JCCF hoped he would be released early after the prosecution agreed to drop the conditions, that there was no guarantee of his release.

We wrote about this earlier, explaining that with this resolution in hand, the case will go before a judge on Monday, where the prosecutor and defense will submit a joint submission.

While it’s highly likely that the judge will accept it, it is important to note that it’s not guaranteed or a foregone conclusion. While it would be very rare, it is not without precedent that the judge could refuse to accept the joint submission and keep James incarcerated until his trial in May, or until he accepts the conditions that prohibit him from stepping foot on church property. Alberta still considers itself in the midst of a public health crisis, and the judge may be immovable.

His release is not a forgone conclusion. Please continue to keep the Coates family in your prayers.