Megachurch Minister and FormerTrump Counselor Admits Guilt to Sexual Abuse of a Minor
The founder of among the biggest megachurches in the US, Robert Morris, has pleaded guilty to molesting a 12-year-old girl in the state of Oklahoma during the 1980s.
Morris, 64, pleaded guilty on that day in the local court on multiple charges of inappropriate acts with a minor. He was sentenced to a decade in prison, but as part of a plea deal will serve only half a year in county jail.
He will register as a sex offender and be required to pay a quarter million dollars in restitution.
Context of the Legal Matter
The disgraced pastor established Gateway church in Southlake, the state of Texas. He expanded it into among the ten biggest megachurches in the US, with over twenty-five thousand attendees weekly.
Cindy Clemishire, fifty-five, the woman who publicly identified herself as the victim of Morris’s sexual abuse, was present in the courtroom as he pleaded guilty. In a prepared statement she told him: “It is impossible to have consent from a child of twelve. We were never in an ‘inappropriate relationship’. I was not a young woman but a minor. You performed a criminal act against me.”
Her sister Karen Black also read a statement, saying: “You pretended to be holy, preaching from large platforms. As you hid behind your facade, we’ve been aware you are simply a predator.”
The pastor stepped down from the congregation last year after Clemishire went public. She had devoted many years seeking justice for the abuse.
Specifics of the Incidents
The molestation began in 1982 when the pastor, at age twenty-one, was a travelling evangelist. He stayed with the family in their residence, where he asked the child into his bedroom.
The molestation persisted for the next four-year period.
A leaked transcript of a conversation revealed that in 2005, Morris tried to bribe Clemishire into silence, telling her to “put a price on it”.
Fall from Grace and Associations
The guilty verdict marks a remarkable fall for the minister. At his height, he wrote multiple popular books and his sermons were transmitted around the world.
He also became a religious counselor to Donald Trump. He joined the presidential advisory group during the first Trump presidency and was involved in an effort to organize religious voters for him in last year’s presidential campaign.
Trump also attended the church in 2020 where he praised Morris and his senior team as “great people with a stellar reputation”.