Texas megachurch pastor resigns after woman says he sexually abused her in the 1980s
DALLAS– The pastor of a Texas megachurch has resigned after a woman said he sexually assaulted her multiple times in the 1980s, starting when she was 12.
Gateway Church’s board of elders said in a statement Tuesday that they had accepted the resignation of Robert Morris, the church’s senior pastor and founder. The board said it had hired a law firm to conduct an independent investigation to ensure they had “a full understanding of the events” between 1982 and 1987.
The allegations came to light on the religious watchdog’s blog on Friday The Wartburg watch. Cindy Clemishire, Morris’ prosecutor, said The Dallas Morning News in an interview Saturday that she met Morris in 1981, when he was a traveling preacher and began preaching at her family’s church in Oklahoma. She said Morris and his wife and son became close to her family. She said he was staying with her in 1982 when he asked her to come to his room. He told her to lie on his bed and then started touching her inappropriately, Clemishire, now 52, said.
She said the abuse lasted about four and a half years. The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Clemishire has done.
When asked about the allegations of The Christian Post, Morris, 62, said in a statement to the publication that when he was in his early 20s, he “was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady at a home where I was staying.”
“It was kissing and petting and not sexual intercourse, but it was wrong,” he said in the statement. “This behavior happened several times over the next few years.”
The board said that before Friday, they “did not have all the facts surrounding the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the duration of the abuse.” They said their understanding of the “extramarital relationship,” which Morris had spoken about many times during his ministry, was not that it was “abuse of a twelve-year-old child.”
The church, located in the Dallas suburb of Southlake, was founded by Morris in 2000 and has multiple locations in the area and says more than 100,000 people attend each weekend. Morris, the founding pastor, was too politically active. He was one of the members of former President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board. The church hosted Trump on its Dallas campus for a period of 2020 discussion about race relations and the economy.
Morris did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment sent to his email at the church.