Robert Morris admits “moral failure” after allegations of sexual abuse of a 12-year-old

A blog in which Gateway Church pastor Robert Morris reported the alleged sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl prompted the Texas megachurch to acknowledge a decades-long “moral failure.” In a statement to staff, however, the church did not mention the woman’s age at the time of the “inappropriate sexual conduct,” referring only to her as a “young lady.”

Gateway Church was founded by Morris in 2000 and is attended by over 100,000 people each weekend at its nine locations and online.

On Friday morning, The Wartburg Watch published an article alleging that Pastor Morris sexually abused Cindy Clemishire, a 54-year-old grandmother of three from Oklahoma, beginning in 1982 when she was 12 years old.

Yesterday at around 4 p.m., senior pastor Thomas Miller sent a statement from Gateway elders to church staff via the messaging platform Slack, according to sources close to the church. These sources also indicated The Roys Report (TRR) with a screenshot of Miller’s message and the elders’ statement.

In the statement, Morris admitted that “in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual conduct toward a young lady in a home in which I resided.” Morris described the conduct as “petting and not sexual intercourse” and said it happened “several times over the course of the next few years.”

He added: “Since then, I have behaved purely and responsibly in this area.”

According to Clemishire, who TRR and gave us permission to use her name, Morris’s abuse began when she was 12 years old – on Christmas night 1982.

Morris, a young and charismatic traveling evangelist, was invited to host a youth revival in her hometown in northeastern Oklahoma and quickly became friends with Clemishire’s parents.

“He and his wife, Debbie, were family friends and often stayed at our house when he preached at my father’s church,” Clemishire said, revealing that the alleged abuse continued until she was 16. “We even went on trips together.”

Clemishire stressed that she was “not a ‘young lady,'” as Gateway said in its statement. “I was a child. I was an innocent little girl.”

At the time of the alleged abuse, Morris was between 21 and 25 years old. He was also pastor of Shady Grove Church, now Gateway Church-Grand Prairie Campus.

Clemishire said she shared a bedroom with her older sister at the time. But when Morris came to visit, he allegedly slept in the girls’ room while Clemishire and her sister slept in another room.

On Christmas night, Morris allegedly asked Clemishire to come into her bedroom and talk for a bit. During this visit, Clemishire said, Morris sexually abused her.

“It was so innocent,” the woman said. “I was wearing pink pajamas with bloomers over my underwear and a robe with snaps.”

The plaintiff described her childhood in the 1970s and 1980s in Oklahoma as a picture-perfect time in a loving family.

“He told me, ‘Don’t tell anyone because it will ruin everything,'” Clemishire said.

“It didn’t ruin anything for him, but it ruined everything for me,” she added. “It was always in the background.”

Clemishire said she was 17 when she told her parents about years of abuse, which escalated from inappropriate touching to violent rape.

“When my father found out what had happened years later, he told the senior pastor at Shady Grove Church that he would report Morris to the police if he did not resign from his ministry,” Clemishire said.

After years of deliberation, the woman turned to a well-known criminal defense attorney to file a civil lawsuit against Morris.

The statute of limitations for the authorities to file criminal charges has long since expired.

“I just wanted someone to pay for the years of counseling I had to go through,” she said.

Clemishire said Gateway offered her $25,000 if she would sign a nondisclosure agreement, but she declined.

“I didn’t want money,” she said TRR“I wanted him to pay for the counseling I had received.”

In his statement, Morris said he “confessed and repented” of his actions and resigned from his ministry for two years in March 1987. He said he also sought psychological counseling and returned to ministry two years later with the blessing of the “young lady’s” father.

However, Clemishire said her father did not bless Morris’ return to the ministry.

“We are instructed to forgive – but that does not mean my father gave his blessing. He wanted to kill him,” Clemishire said.

TRR reached out to Gateway spokesman Lawrence Swicegood for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

In his message to Gateway staff, Pastor Miller explained that he was sending the elders’ statement “to give (staff) an opportunity to respond if anyone asks, not to proactively send it to people.”

The email also asked staff to refer parishioners who “want to talk further about anything” to a campus pastor and to refer media representatives to Lawrence Swicegood.

Gateway Church Statement – ​​June 14, 2024

Sheila Stogsdill is a freelance print journalist and digital reporter who primarily covers crime issues for KSN/KODE.