(GoRealNewsNow.com) – Robert Morris, founder of the Texas-based Gateway Church and former spiritual adviser for former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, has been accused of sexual abuse.
Speaking to The Wartburg Watch, Cindy Clemishire, now in her 50s, said she was sexually abused by the pastor when she was a child.
Clemishire recounted that she and her family met Morris at a youth revival in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1981. At the time, he was a 20-year-old traveling evangelist, and Clemishire was 11.
Morris, who began regularly preaching at her church, would often stay at Clemishire’s home and became a family friend.
However, The Wartburg Watch wrote that this changed while Morris was staying at her family’s house for Christmas the next year when Clemishire was 12.
Morris allegedly told Clemishire to come to his bedroom, where he proceeded to touch her stomach and breasts and “felt under her panties.” Clemishire claimed that Morris warned her to “never tell anyone about this because it will ruin everything.”
When she turned 16, the woman alleged that Morris, then a pastor at what is now Gateway Church’s Grand Prairie Campus, would take her out in his car and “attempt to have sexual intercourse.”
“I was 12 years old. I was a little girl. A very innocent little girl. And he was brought into our home,” Clemishire told the Christian Post, adding that it has taken decades to wrap her brain around what happened to her.
When he found out, Clemishire’s father called the church’s head pastor to report Morris and demanded he step down.
Furthermore, Morris admitted to being “involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying.”
“It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong. This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years,” the pastor said in the statement.
Morris said the situation was “brought to light, and it was confessed and repented of” in 1987, and he “submitted” himself to the elders of Shady Grove Church and Clemishire’s father.
“They asked me to step out of ministry and receive counseling and freedom ministry, which I did. Since that time, I have walked in purity and accountability in this area,” Morris added.
Morris, Gateway’s website says, will step down as the church’s senior pastor in the spring of 2025, though he will remain a “primary speaker” on weekends.
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