Hillsong founder Brian Houston was not the only person who knew his father sexually abused at least one boy and did not tell police, his lawyer has told a court.

Houston, 68, appeared in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Monday, having earlier pleaded not guilty to concealing a serious indictable offence of another person.

It is not being disputed whether his father Frank Houston abused a boy in January 1970, but whether Houston failed to alert authorities without a reasonable excuse.

Houston allegedly confronted his father in late 1999, who confessed, before he died in 2004, the court heard.

Crown prosecutor Gareth Harrison said Houston spoke publicly about discovering his father’s abuse in interviews in the years following his death, including around the time of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, but never reported it to police.

He knew who his father abused and knew they were a child when it happened, Mr Harrison said.

“(Houston) failed to bring that to the attention of the police and did so without reasonable excuse,” he said.

Phillip Boulten SC, representing Houston, told the court his client was respecting the survivor of Frank Houston’s abuse and his wishes not to report it to police, as were several others who were made aware of it before Houston.

They include the boy’s since-deceased mother, who told other church figures decades after she was first told by her then-teenage son in the late 1970s, the court heard.

Now in his 60s, he told the court he felt he couldn’t say anything about Frank Houston abusing him, which began the night before his eighth birthday.

“It was very complicated to me. My friends, my family and our family’s family were all connected to the church,” he said on Monday.

“I was under the moral and spiritual control of Frank and the church and I did not feel that I should do it.”

He said he was later pressured to sign a napkin in exchange for his silence and $10,000 during a meeting with Frank Houston and another church figure.

In a phone call with Houston after the money did not arrive, he told the church pastor that he had agreed to forgive his father.

“He turned around and said to me ‘you know this is all your fault’. I didn’t say anything, and he said ‘you tempted my father’,” he told the court.

He recalled being shocked by the response.

“I asked him was he molested also by Frank, and he got very upset … he was mainly just yelling and swearing,” he said.

Several weeks later, a cheque arrived and he deposited it in his account.

Mr Boulten argued that by the time Houston found out about his father’s actions, the abuse survivor was an adult in his 30s and could have reported it to police.

“The people who did know about it and did not tell the police about it, like (Houston), did not tell the police about it because (the survivor) was so adamant that he didn’t want to go to the police,” Mr Boulten said.

“Tens of thousands of people knew about (Frank Houston’s) offending … including police officers in all probability,” he said.

Houston and his wife Bobbie founded the Hills Christian Life Centre in 1983, which later merged with the Sydney branch founded by his father to become Hillsong.

It spread globally through its large conferences, music, and television productions, attracting tens of thousands of members.

Houston was charged by NSW Police in August 2021, following an investigation which began in 2019.

The hearing is scheduled to continue until December 22.