Former Trump advisor Pastor Robert Morris admits “inappropriate sexual behavior”

Pastor Robert Morris, pastor of a Texas megachurch and spiritual adviser to former President Donald Trump, admitted a “moral failure” four decades ago after a woman accused him of repeatedly abusing her as a child.

The woman, Cindy Clemishire, told NBC News that Morris, now pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, stayed with her family on Christmas night 1982. She was 12 at the time and he was 21. Clemishire, now 54, said he invited her into his room and told her to lie on her back. Then he touched her breasts and reached under her panties, Clemishire said – the first of several similar encounters that would continue over the next 4.5 years, she said.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Clemishire remembered him saying. “It will ruin everything.”

Clemishire’s allegations were published Friday on The Wartburg Watch, a website that specializes in exposing church abuse cases. Responding to questions about Clemishire’s report, Morris said in a statement to The Christian Post, an evangelical news site, on Saturday that he engaged in “inappropriate sexual conduct toward a young lady” when he was in his 20s.

“It was kissing and petting and not sexual intercourse, but it was wrong,” Morris said in the statement. The same written statement was sent to Gateway Church staff on Friday within hours of Clemishire’s story being published in The Wartburg Watch, according to a copy of the message viewed by NBC News.

Without mentioning Clemishire by name, Morris said the sexual encounters occurred “several times” over the next few years until “the situation came to light in March 1987” – which seems to confirm the timeline described by Clemishire. Morris said he confessed his sins to church elders at that time and asked for forgiveness.

“Since then, I have led purity and responsibility in this area,” Morris said, according to the statement. “The sin was properly dealt with through confession and repentance.”

Morris has not been accused of a crime. Neither he nor Gateway Church officials responded to phone calls and emails seeking comment. In the message to staff on Friday, Gateway officials said Morris “properly disclosed” the matter to church elders.

“There have been no further moral failings since the resolution of this 35-year-old matter,” the message said.

Morris’ reach and influence extend far beyond his role as the leader of one of the country’s largest megachurches. He served on Trump’s spiritual advisory board during his first presidential campaign and while in office. In a statement to NBC News on Monday, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung distanced himself from Trump and Morris, saying the former president had no knowledge of the allegations.

“He has no role in the 2024 election campaign,” Cheung said. “President Trump’s broad support among faith communities across the country is a testament to his unwavering commitment to upholding the faith and protecting religious freedom.”

Clemishire said she was disgusted by Morris’s description of her as a “young lady.” She also noted that Morris wrote in his 2005 book, “From Dream to Destiny,” that he retired from church ministry for two years in the late 1980s because God revealed to him that he had become too proud. He omitted any mention of the sexual misconduct that church leaders now say was the reason for his temporary retirement.

“I don’t know if someone deserves to be reinstated in a position where they committed criminal acts against a child,” Clemishire said Monday. “I believe that people can be reinstated if they are caught doing something and show genuine remorse, but if you lie about it, I don’t think that’s genuine remorse.”

Clemishire’s attorney, Boz Tchividjian, is a former prosecutor who has investigated sexual misconduct and child abuse cases for three decades. Tchividjian, a grandson of famed evangelist Billy Graham, said the use of phrases such as “moral failure” and “young lady” served to “whitewash something criminal.”

“I was responsible for putting people in prison who are still there today for doing the same thing that Robert Morris did to my client,” Tchividjian said. “They’re in prison, and he’s preaching to thousands week after week.”

When Clemishire’s family met Morris, he was a traveling evangelist speaking at churches and school assemblies under the guidance of James Robison, a televangelist and leader of the Moral Majority movement of the 1980s. In 1987, Morris was pastor of Shady Grove Church between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Clemishire said that at the urging of a friend, she finally told her father in March, when she was 17, about how Morris had abused her for years. She said her father was angry, called the senior pastor of Shady Grove and threatened to file a police report if Morris did not resign.

What followed was a “two-year recovery process,” including professional counseling, according to the Gateway elders’ staff message. In his statement, Morris said the girl’s father blessed his return to ministry at the end of the two years, which Clemishire denies.

“My father said, ‘I gave you over to God; you’re just lucky I didn’t kill you,'” Clemishire said. “So that wasn’t a blessing.”

A decade later, in 2000, Morris founded Gateway Church in Southlake, which grew to become one of the largest megachurches in the country, with an estimated weekly attendance of 100,000 people at multiple locations.

Clemishire, who works as a real estate agent in Oklahoma, said she has tried repeatedly over the years to tell church leaders what she believes Morris did to her as a child – at Gateway and at other congregations. Her story only came to light last week after a retired pastor suggested she speak to The Wartburg Watch. It has been painful to watch Morris grow in notoriety and influence, Clemishire said.

“If he had revealed the truth, he would not be allowed to work in his church’s kindergarten,” she said. “Why should he be in the pulpit?”

Today, Morris is known in Texas and nationally for his efforts to promote conservative Christian morality through government and Republican policies. Like many evangelical leaders, Morris remained loyal to Trump after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Eight months later, in September 2021, Morris joined a conference call of pro-Trump evangelical leaders and prayed that the nation would never have another election stolen from the American people again—echoing Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

In 2017, Morris called on his community members to support a bill proposed by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott as a means of “keeping women and children safe” that would have banned transgender people from using public restrooms of their gender.

He also preached about the dangers children face in public schools. Morris said Satan attacks students there through curricula and libraries. For the past four years, each year before Election Day, Morris has endorsed conservative candidates for local school board who ran on promises to prevent the spread of critical race theory and LGBTQ inclusion policies in schools.

“If you haven’t looked at the material in the textbooks in our school libraries, I want you to look,” Morris said from the pulpit in May 2022. “It is as pornographic as anything you have ever read.”

Like most evangelical pastors, Morris teaches a strict adherence to sexual purity outside of marriage. In a 2014 sermon, he spoke about his own struggle with sexual immorality as a teenager. To satisfy his sinful lust, Morris said, he “learned to lie and manipulate” and to specifically “seek out girls who were insecure.”

“Girls were created to be held by men,” Morris told his congregation before citing a Bible passage about rape. “If their father doesn’t meet that need in a healthy way, they will meet it in an unhealthy way.”

In his speech to the women in the congregation, Morris then said that when a man seeks a sexual relationship outside of marriage, such as flirting at the office, he does so because “he is satisfying a desire that you have awakened in him.”

“I’m not saying it’s right,” Morris said, “but I’m trying to make you understand how important it is not to whet someone’s appetite.”

Clemishire said she felt uncomfortable when she watched a video of the sermon this week. To her, it sounded like Morris was blaming girls and women for the sins of men.

“If he’s on stage and vulnerable and exposes all his weaknesses, then of course people are attracted to that,” Clemishire said. “I don’t think they would have been attracted to the fact that he abused a 12-year-old child.”