Pat Mesiti, Former Hillsong Church Pastor, Arrested for Domestic Violence

By Timothy Yap Jan 03, 2016 03:33 PM EST

Pat Mesiti, one of Hillsong Church's former key pastors who has spoken across the megachurch's platforms, has been arrested. On New Year's Eve, he was allegedly charged with assaulting his second wife in a fit of anger and rage. Police from The Hills Local Area Command in Sydney's north-west arrested Pat Mesiti at his home about 11pm on Thursday.

"The accused was heavily intoxicated and in a fit of rage over a family issue," Sergeant Michael Plass told the Sydney Morning Herald, revealing that Mesiti was charged with common assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Fifteen years ago, Mesiti was not only one of the senior ministers at Hillsong Church, he even had his own television show and he was a national director of the Pentecostal church movement Australian Christian Churches. However, in 2001, the church leadership at Hillsong discovered he had been sleeping with prostitutes. He was stripped of his licence to minister. His first marriage fell apart.

"I was basically struggling with a sexual addiction," he told the Christian magazine Sight in 2006. Two years later he told the New Zealand Herald he had "lost everything" following the revelations.

"I was so depressed that I couldn't talk for two years. I struggled with my mental health."

Currently, Mesiti is a prosperity speaker who speaks to business leaders about how to experience growth stretching their prosperity to its greatest potential. Mesiti has an ambition of making 10,000 millionaires in his life time. According to his website, Mesiti "has spoken for, and shared the platform globally with some of the world's most influential people including, Sir Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Denis Waitley, Robert Kiyosaki, Mark Victor Hansen, Jim Rohn, the late Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, Captain Jerry Coffee, Allan Pease, Bob Proctor, Willie Jolley, Morris Goodman "The Miracle Man", and many more..."

"Pat Mesiti's enthusiasm combined with his great sense of humor gives him the ability to move an audience into action as well as give them practical resources to help them achieve their goals. He is a gifted communicator and will add tremendous value to the lives he touches. Pat is Dynamic - Entertaining - Unforgettable!"