SUFFER THE CHILDREN
As the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care prepares to investigate clergy, David Fisher follows the trail of abuse left by leaders of the Assemblies of God
Jim Williams was a man of God aged 25 when Joanne Ridge says he pulled her close, thrust his tongue into her mouth and put his hands inside her top. She was 12. “He was fondling my breasts and I didn’t even have any,” says Ridge. “The shame was so great. I had such fear I was going to get kicked out of the church if I told anybody.”
That was 1960. Later, Pastor Jim Williams would become New Zealand’s Assemblies of God General Superintendent, leader of the faith.
In a car, parked behind a church outside Melbourne, Williams was Heathmont Assembly of God’s youth pastor, married with children, and allegedly, a determined sexual predator who targeted young girls.
When questions were asked, Williams was transferred away from his victims to a ministry in Adelaide.
In 1972, he became pastor at the Hamilton Assembly of God in New Zealand. So successful was he in growing the church and attracting people to God’s path that in 1977 he became General Superintendent, the AOG national leadership role.
Williams succeeded Pastor Frank Houston, who had led Assemblies of God in New Zealand since 1965. Houston, a powerful preacher, has also been accused of sexually assaulting children.
Williams took over from Houston then gave way himself in 1989 for Pastor Wayne Hughes to take over as General Superintendent. In 2005, Hughes resigned on health grounds after an allegation of sexually inappropriate behaviour with a teenager.
All told, these allegations cover five decades of Assemblies of God church leadership.
There is evidence of a written agreement between the New Zealand and Australian Assemblies of God to keep criminal sexual offending by Houston quiet.
The Royal Commission into Abuse in Care has told the Herald its remit includes “pastoral care” of children, and it is preparing to investigate abuse by clergy. If it turns its attentions to the Assemblies of God, it will find it has already has a complaint registered about Houston from his time as a Salvation Army lieutenant overseeing a children’s home in Temuka between 1945-1948.
With alleged victims spanning at least 30 years, until he left for Australia in 1977, there is every indication Houston was a life-long predatory paedophile. He died in 2004.
There is also new information on Williams, who was notorious for his predatory sexual behaviour towards women. At least two child victims came forward after his death in 2015. One described how questions over his behaviour led t his transfer to another Assembly of God church.
Houston’s former friend and onetime disciple, New South Wales Pastor Bob Cotton, will be relieved.
As he puts it: “The General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in New Zealand is a child rapist — how can that not be worthy of investigation by the Royal Commission?”
In 1960, Houston and Williams are alleged to have sexually assaulted children — Houston in Wellington, Williams in Melbourne. Those were not the only instances and not the only victims, according to information gathered during a Herald investigation.
In the South Island, a man called David, in his 60s, considers Houston’s sexualisation of his youth led to his unhealthy obsession with pornography, and destructive relationships that almost ruined his marriage.
In Melbourne, Joanne Ridge, now 72, believes Williams’ sexual pursuit of her as a child led to a warping of much that followed in her life.
Williams was youth pastor to Ridge and her twin sister Caroline Andrews at the Heathmont Assembly of God near Melbourne. Ridge was first, at 11, and Andrews next, at 12. That first time, Ridge says he collected her for youth group driving the Williams’ family car. “He drove around the back of the church. He started talking, kept me in the car and said he wanted to kiss me. I didn’t know anything about tongue-kissing.”
For Andrews, who died 18 months ago, it began “the night she got baptised”, says Ridge. “We were very naive, very sheltered. We had no experience with boys. My childhood was taken away by that man.
“That’s why I have had such guilt over the years. I didn’t say anything. I had such shame and fear.”
The impact was immediate — Ridge’s grades collapsed, her academic focus gone — and long-lasting. Even now, every decade since has a calamity she links back to Williams.
When she was 16, her father died. “I thought God was punishing me. I thought it was my fault.” When she was an adult and disclosed the abuse to a pastor, along with the childhood trauma of a brother struck by a tram, she was asked if that accident was why she “turned to Jim — for comfort?”.
“We don’t know what sort of people we would have been if that hadn’t happened to us.”
THE TWINS’ childhood friend, Tony Hallo, went on to serve as an Assemblies of God Pastor. Now in Townsville, he has visited Ridge in the past few years and heard her account. It rings true with his recollection of the time, including one girl who talked of having to “watch where [Williams] puts his hands”.
At the time, he dismissed that girl as a gossip. Now, “I know that it happened”. Hallo also recalls how Williams — was “suddenly” no longer youth leader, and sent with his family to live in Adelaide.
It was a different time, says Hallo. “Not everything that was badly handled was badly handled because of concealment.
“It would have been so far removed from what they knew that they wouldn’t know how to handle it. And it is so far removed from what we stand for and what we believe.”
It took decades for David to reconcile his relationship with God after childhood abuse by Houston. He told his story to the New Zealand Royal Commission in a private session with former chairman Sir Anand Satyanand.
David grew up in Lower Hutt in a Christian family that attended the Lower Hutt Assembly of God under Houston’s ministry. Houston would visit his childhood home in Wellington for evening prayer meetings. During a break he would excuse himself and visit the 8-year-old boy, who had been tucked into bed for the night, and reach beneath the sheets.
“I named this thing ‘the black shadow’. I took a piece of wood to bed with me every night so I could defend myself or knock on the wall to alert my parents. The problem was that when ‘the black shadow’ entered my room I was so fearful I could do nothing.”
When David’s family moved to Lower Hutt the evening prayer meetings were held at the Assembly of God church. It did not end the abuse. Frank Houston was determined, insistent and persistent in his pursuit of children. There were casual brushes, touching at lunch and other social gatherings. When hugging became a feature in church welcomes, Frank Houston embraced the opportunity.
“Frank would seek out young men to embrace. I still remember him pushing his crotch into me as we embraced in ‘brotherly love’.”
The abuse faded with time then surfaced. “I got into porn and that was my comfort. It nearly destroyed my marriage.” As he sees it, the objectification of him as a child led to a demand for visual stimulation.
David wrote about it as part of confronting a lifetime of damage he says was caused by Frank Houston.
“Despite appearing to be a successful corporate manager, I couldn’t sustain the facade,” he wrote. “I lived with fear, mistrust, anger and shame. I was depressed, lonely and isolated.
“I sought comfort from my pain in unhelpful ways, compulsively pursuing and becoming involved in one relationship after another, sometimes having more than one sexual or emotional liaison at a time.
“I lived my life in compartments and feeling completely shut off from myself, God, my family and friends.”
He disclosed to his wife in 2009, and set about finding a way to fix what was broken. State-funded counselling and involvement in a men’s counselling and recovery group have helped. He has also found ways to start to repair his relationship with God, although struggles with the inability of religion to deal with those who cultivate and breach faith.
He has no doubt there are others like him, possibly dozens. He has no doubt others in the church knew, and if it had come out sooner there would be fewer broken people. “This is stuff churches are very good at hiding.”
PASTOR DON Barry found himself at the centre of a storm of imperfections in the early 1990s.
He had taken over his Hamilton Assembly of God ministry from Jim Williams, a star of the church and its General Superintendent, who left for Australia in 1989. Church historian Philip Carew wrote in his Master of Arts thesis, of Williams’ “dynamic leadership” and that his “regular programme on the newly formed Radio Rhema, lifted the Assemblies of God’s profile considerably”.
But a knock on Barry’s office door started a chain of events that would lead to him taking the church out of the Assemblies of God.
That day in 1994, a staff member at the church stood there, Barry remembers, “white-faced”. Someone had just disclosed an affair with the previous minister, Williams.
The disclosure led to Williams admitting adultery but as time went on, further disclosures changed Barry’s perception of the former church leader from someone who had simply had a misstep. “When you have a leader who is systematically preying on women, you don’t have a sick person, you have a predator.”
Then came a second knock on the door. Barry was approached by a church elder who — aware of the complaint over Williams — disclosed an allegation of sexual offending by Frank Houston.
Through the elder, and then the father of the victims, Barry learned of Houston visiting the Waikato area about 25 years earlier on a crusade. Like the other cases — of which Barry was unaware until years later — Houston stayed overnight, and then descended on the boys after dark to sexually assault them in their beds.
“Both of the men were General Superintendents of the movement. Both had failed,” he told the Herald. Getting action from the central church body, though, was like “pushing water uphill with a rake”.
A letter from Barry to the church authorities in 2000 recorded frustration over how the national executive of the Assemblies of God had handled complaints about Houston and Williams’ over the previous six years. “We felt very alone over this period,” he wrote to the church executive in 2000.
Williams had admitted to “one incident of immorality” rather than the “established record of preying on women in his pastoral care”. Barry added, “what we know is probably a fraction of what transpired” and the Assemblies of God action to deal with it was “too little, too late”.
Barry wrote that Gateway church had been accused in New Zealand and from Australia of “attempting to destroy this Man of God” when the church should “cover it up with love”. “This advice came from within the New Zealand Executive as well.”
Barry’s letter refers to Houston
being “invited to speak at the national conference shortly afterwards”. The Herald has tracked that visit to the Assemblies of God in New Zealand conference in 1995, attended by 399 ministers.
Barry wrote how his congregation had assumed Houston’s presence at the conference showed “there was no validity in the claims” of abuse, and how the church would have accepted that except “there was simply no communication with us at all”.
“Unfortunately, since then, we have had several other people emerge with similar claims.” The most recent, he said, was in 1999.
A counsellor in the congregation reported claims of abuse against Houston by two new victims.
Barry recorded how those were conveyed to Assemblies of God elder Ken Harrison, who kept in touch with Barry and was said to have raised the matter with those on the church executive. “Time has passed, and again, silence,” Barry wrote in the July 2000 letter.
There were, by now, six complaints of abuse. “It is not enough to simply ‘bury’ it and hope it will go away. To do this may create the same scenario the Catholic Church is now facing — issues of clergy abuse complicated by a conspiracy of silence among authorities.”
Harrison says the New Zealand executive did handle it, agreeing a course of action with Australia, where Houston now lived. “It was properly investigated at the time. All the information we had, because he was domiciled in Australia at the time, they said they would take it from there. We brought it to light and because he was living in Australia at the time, we took it to Australia.”
FED UP with what he believed was a lack of action, Barry led his congregation out of the Assemblies of God to what became the independent Gateway Church.
When Australia’s Royal Commission came to study how the Assemblies of God in Australia handled the outing of Houston as a sexual predator, the evidence showed it was eager to do so with as little fanfare as possible. There was evidence the Assemblies of God in New Zealand agreed to a similar, low-profile response.
Minutes of a meeting at Hillsong Church in November 2000 record Pastor Brian Houston outlining his father’s “inappropriate sexual behaviour with boys around 33 years ago”.
Until then, Frank Houston had admitted only to a single instance of sexual assault — against Brett Sengstock in Sydney in 1970, while on a church visit from New Zealand.
Now, Brian Houston told church leaders “the New Zealand executive [was] investigating rumours of inappropriate behaviour involving Frank Houston and between two and five people”. Australian church leaders Keith Ainge and John Lewis flew to New Zealand the following week to meet with local church leaders.
At that meeting, the New Zealand executive spoke of “rumours” circulating for “at least three years in relation to Frank having improper dealings with young boys in excess of 30 years ago”.
A report on Ainge and Lewis’ trip stated: “The New Zealand Executive believe that the allegations are substantial and they have no reason to doubt them.”
The complainants, said the notes, wanted justice done but also “appear to want to avoid publicity and trouble”. The Australians proposed Houston never be allowed to minister again, and the New Zealanders agreed. There was also discussion about whether a public statement should be made, and that “at least 50 pastors in New Zealand are aware of the allegations”.
“John Lewis stressed that the Australian executive preferred not to publish a statement unless Frank failed to comply with our requirement to abstain from all ministry or unless rumours became so bad that it was considered in the best interests to all concerned.
“The New Zealand executive agreed with this approach.”
The report closes with the Australian church leaders recounting their confrontation of Houston, by now said to be suffering early stage dementia. Faced with four allegations, Houston “was unable to remember the first three incidents”.
“He did not deny them, accepting that was a continuing problem during that period of time but he could not confess to them. When confronted with the name of the fourth person, he confessed an improper incident had taken place.”
Frank Houston was told “he should never preach again“, and that a statement prepared for release would not be used unless he set forth in ministry once more, or if rumours grew to a point there needed to be public acknowledgement.
That statement spoke of Houston admitting to a “serious moral failure” that occurred “more than 30 years ago”. As the church executive had agreed, the statement carried a note saying it would not be released without Australian and New Zealand authorities agreeing, and only if absolutely necessary. There was no reference to sexual offending against children. Frank Houston was allowed to go, quietly, with church minutes recording his departure as a “resignation” to be announced as a “retirement” while he and Hazel holidayed in New Zealand in January 2001.
THE SILENCE was partly broken by Pastor Philip Powell in December 2002. He had grown up in New Zealand and ministered in Hamilton with Don Barry.
Powell, who was now in Brisbane, had connected with a victim of Houston’s from Lower Hutt. In an email, sent to a range of pastors and the churches’ executive, he railed against how New Zealand’s Assemblies of God had handled such an “inexplicable evil”.
“Clearly, your executive and that of AoG in Australia could be found guilty of attempted cover-ups,” he wrote.
Four days before Christmas, Assemblies of God in New Zealand wrote to its ministers, in a letter headed “Extremely Confidential” with a subject line, “Sexual failure of senior ministers”.
In it, the church acknowledged “serious sexual offences” by Houston and the “sexual failure” of Williams.
In relation to Houston, it said there were “unsubstantiated” allegations in the mid-1990s with witnesses “not clearly identified”, but clear evidence in 1999-2000 that led to New Zealand’s involvement in Australia removing Houston’s credentials to minister.
Nowhere in the letter does it say Houston’s victims were children. There is nothing in the letter to differentiate his behaviour from that of Williams, who was described — in a quote lifted from a 1994 newsletter — as having “committed adulterous offences and other indiscretions involving different women”.
The letter is signed by Pastor Wayne Hughes on behalf of the national executive. Its penultimate paragraph reads: “We have deliberately chosen to restrict this letter to our ordained and probationary ministers. We cannot see any reason for this to be announced to your church or further afield.”
AUSTRALIA’S ROYAL Commission focused on how institutions responded to allegations of abuse and was highly critical of Australia’s Assemblies of God’s handling of the Houston matter.
Its report focused on Houston’s abuse of Brett Sengstock, rather than the cluster of cases reported from New Zealand.
It found the churches’ national body failed to follow its own procedures by not appointing a contact person for Sengstock and never organising a proper interview to find out exactly what had happened.
No disciplinary proceedings involving Houston were reported.
Pastor Brian Houston did not — as required — report his father to police, saying he and church executives considered Sengstock to be an adult who could do so if he wished. A police investigation into the failure to report remains open.
The Royal Commission also found Brian Houston — who at one stage helped organise a payment from his father to Sengstock — did not recognise he had a conflict of interest in his role as national president of the Assemblies of God in Australia, and senior pastor of the church in which his father ministered.
When the Royal Commission reviewed the Australian Christian Churches’ manual for handling complaints of sexual misconduct against ministers, it found the procedure “gives priority to the protection of pastors over the safety of children”.
If the Assemblies of God in New Zealand were looking to Australia’s church body to handle it properly, it was a failure by its own measure at the time.
The Assemblies of God in New Zealand has refused to be interviewed on the issue of Houston or Williams. It has not answered specific questions posed by the Herald, or responded to new information provided by the Herald about Williams’ alleged sexual assaults on children.
In an emailed statement, National Secretary Pastor Darren Gammie said the allegations of “inappropriate conduct” by Houston and Williams were received “many years after the offending had taken place with both ministers no longer credentialled with the Assemblies of God in New Zealand”.
As they were living in Australia, the
If you were a Christian, wouldn’t you want that? Wouldn’t you want that blessing? They didn’t get a blessing. They got their kids raped, is what they got.
Bob Cotton, New South Wales pastor
New Zealand body “attempted to deal with them as swiftly as possible in conjunction with the Australian Assemblies of God, as they fell under their jurisdiction”.
“In relation to Frank Houston, quite simply, we are unaware of anything that would indicate dozens and dozens of victims.”
Gammie said the executive “received evidence” of Houston abusing children in August 2000 and “moved immediately to address the issues raised”. He said there was no information held showing Houston was confronted in the 1970s over abuse of a child. Those known to have been abused were contacted by members of the executive, offered apologies and asked how they wanted the allegation handled.
Gammie said the Assemblies of God in New Zealand learned of Williams’ “immoral behaviour” in
1993 and told members in March
1994. Williams was stood down from ministering for two years by Assemblies of God in Australia, where he was living at the time, while the New Zealand executive pushed to make that permanent, and banned him from ministering in NZ.
“The immoral behaviour of Jim Williams was deplorable and entirely inappropriate for any minister of the gospel.”
Gammie said the executive “knew nothing” of the allegation Williams’ had allegedly sexually assaulted Ridge, her sister and potentially other children. He said the Assemblies of God in New Zealand would work with any specific investigation launched by the Royal Commission.
The New Zealand Royal Commission into Abuse in Care says it has “close links” with the former Australian Royal Commission and “they have provided us with considerable assistance”. No formal requests for evidence have been made, but when they are, there is confidence “any requests will be given the greatest degree of co-operation possible”.
And it seems increasingly likely it will ask, having confirmed that the definition of “care” in its Terms of Reference is considered to include pastoral care.
THE ROYAL Commission, already encumbered with the broadest of tasks of any similar inquiry anywhere in the world, has expanded its boundaries enormously.
And yet, it makes sense. Houston was a powerful preacher. He was lauded as a true champion of God, spreading the word not only around New Zealand but in Australia and around the world. And when he did so, everywhere he went became God’s church and was his ministry.
Cotton, the New South Wales pastor who was Houston’s friend, discovered in 2014 that his mate and mentor was a paedophile.
Until then, the “extremely confidential” letter that went around about
Frank Houston’s “moral failure” had people thinking it was a same-sex encounter. “I’m thinking it’s a pat on the bum — no big thing.”
Sengstock’s 2014 evidence to the Royal Commission in Australia changed everything. “I thought, ‘my God, I’ve been lied to by all the top people at the Assemblies of God.”
Cotton had already been rocked by the death of a childhood friend who had been sexually abused by clergy as a youth. Now he felt the evangelical churches were no different when it came to ministers who abused and institutions who failed to deal with it.
And he saw Houston do it by using his ministry as a tool.
“Jesus said, ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me’. And Frank would shower children with gifts.”
And where Houston travelled, he would stay with members of the congregation. As Cotton points out, Jesus sent his ministers out to stay with those to whom they would minister.
For those who follow the Word, accepting the traveller would bring “the peace of God be on your house”.
Cotton: “If you were a Christian, wouldn’t you want that? Wouldn’t you want that blessing? They didn’t get a blessing. They got their kids raped, is what they got. Frank raped that little boy [Brett Sengstock] numerous times. The family had opened up their home to a man of God and they were proud to do so.”
As Cotton says, there’s no peace in anyone’s house until all the truth comes out.
Williams’ set up and preached at the Springwood House of Praise after leaving New Zealand. His wife Betty maintains strong links there. Springwood pastor Kathy Cumming said the church, and Williams’ family, wanted nothing to do with the issues raised by the Herald.
Hillsong Church — described by one complainant as “the bastard child of Frank Houston” — continues to grow in strength with more than 150,000 members in more than 20 countries. Brian Houston is close to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who tried to bring him along on a White House visit. The faith leader made it a few months later, praying with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Brian Houston would not be interviewed by the Herald. He has also refused to be interviewed by police investigating the failure to report his father to authorities.
In a statement, he said he became aware of allegations against his father from New Zealand in 2001-2002.
“I have been touched by the horrific act of child sexual abuse in a very personal way. Having to face the fact that my father engaged in such repulsive acts was — and still is — agonising.
“However as painful as this is for me, I can only imagine how much more pain these events caused to the victims, and my prayer is that they find peace and wholeness.”