Hotel staff deny Houston leak
STAFF at a Sydney hotel where Hillsong founder Brian Houston spent 40 minutes alone in a female church member’s room say there is no way they would leak a guest’s personal details.
Mystery still surrounds how Houston ended up knocking on the door of the wrong hotel room. This was one of a number of incidents leading to his resignation at the megachurch. Staff at the Pullman at Sydney Olympic Park told the Faith on Trial podcast, which is out on Wednesday, that they would never breach a guest’s privacy.
“We don’t just give out room numbers,” said a manager, who asked not to be named. “If you came up and asked for someone’s room number, we would just call the room and tell the guest that someone was here for them.”
The manager said staff at the hotel took security seriously and were acutely aware of the safety of single female guests. The details have emerged in the new eight-part podcast that has investigated Hillsong. The woman complained that Houston spent time in her room, which sparked an investigation at Hillsong.
Mr Houston has denied any “sexual activity” happened in the 40 minutes he was in the woman’s hotel room. The woman did not take her complaint outside of the organisation. Houston later paid back the money the woman had donated to the church after she complained.
The 68-year-old claimed he resigned because the public statements from Hillsong made his position untenable.
“In my heartfelt apology to the people of Hillsong church and to the church at large, I spoke about alcohol as having not proven itself to be my friend,” he said.
“But sadly, that has built a narrative out there that I’m an alcoholic and to stories about my alcoholism that are the result of gossip and whispering and innuendo.
“The narrative that I’m an alcoholic is false. In fact, I’ve been told by an expert therapist that I do not display the behaviours that are typical of an alcoholic.” He added in a video posted online in November 2022 that he apologised for incidents that were “unbecoming for a minister of the gospel”.
Hillsong’s new global senior pastor, Phil Dooley, announced Mr Houston’s resignation in March 2022, following a complaint about the incident at the Pullman and a text message he had sent a woman in 2013.
He described what happened at the hotel after Houston and the woman had been drinking in the hotel bar.
“Brian had also been taking anxiety tablets,” Mr Dooley said in a leaked video. “And later that evening he went to attempt to go to his room, didn’t have his room key and ended up knocking on the door of this woman’s room. And she opened the door and he went into her room.
“The truth is we don’t know what happened next. This woman has said there has not been any sexual activity, Brian has said there was no sexual activity, but he was in the room for 40 minutes.”