Robert Morris is the senior pastor of Gateway Church, the largest church in America, which has more than 100,000 people spread across several campuses. He has been accused of years-long child sexual abuse of a twelve year old girl, according to an article from Wartburg Watch, which has spoken to the alleged victim.
Cindy Clemishire says she was eleven years old when she met Robert Morris, who at the time was a married twenty-year-old evangelist. He started to preach at her home church and eventually became friends with the family, including going on trips together. According to Cindy, that all changed on 12/25/1982, Christmas night, when:
The Morris family came to visit and spend some time there. Cindy sat in the back seat of the car with Robert. He asked her to visit him in his room that night. She shared a room with her sister. Cindy, an innocent twelve-year-old girl, movingly described what she was wearing. She was wearing pink pajamas with bloomer pants. She wore underwear underneath. She had a snap-up robe on. I laughed. I used to dress for bed similarly.
She thought nothing of visiting a family friend in their bedroom. He told her to lie down on her back and touched her stomach. He told her to close her eyes. Then he touched her breasts and felt under her panties. He warned her:Never tell anyone about this because it will ruin everything.
She returned to her bedroom and didn’t tell her sister what happened.
Robert Morris repeated this behavior until March 1987. This would happen in Texas and Oklahoma, and the family would stay at the Morris home in Texas. Her father donated money to Robert’s ministry, not realizing what was happening to his daughter.
This sexual contact and molestations continued until she was sixteen, while he was pastor at Shady Grove Church, which ultimately became Gateway Church-Grand Prairie Campus.
Cindy eventually confided in a friend who reported it to her father. In response, her father issued a threat to Morris, demanding that he step down from the ministry he would report the abuse to law enforcement. The family friendship imploded and Morris complied, stepping away from ministry for two years. However, he eventually returned and became head of the biggest church in the country.
Morris has previously detailed his rebellious roots, where he would routinely engage in sexual sin as a teenager, explicitly targeting girls he viewed as vulnerable. In his book From Dream to Destiny, he claims he stepped back from the ministry and took a regular job when he was 25, the time he was exposed, due to “pride.”
Wartburg further shares:
Cindy sought a financial settlement to help reimburse her for her counseling, but she wouldn’t sign an NDA. In 2005, she obtained an attorney to file a civil lawsuit. Robert Morris’s attorney responded by implying that they believed it was her fault because she was “flirtatious.” She asked for $50,000 (which was not much in my estimation.) They responded that they would give her $25,000 if she signed an NDA. She refused, so she can now tell her side of the story.
After being recently confronted about it, the Elders of Gateway Church have release a statement to staffers in case they get proactively asked about it, saying that Morris had a “moral failure” 35 years ago, and was “involved in an inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” and that “it was kissing and petting and not intercourse.”
However, according to Cindy, she was not a “young lady” but rather a CHILD, and the alleged child sexual abuse lasted 4.5 years. This is a not just an instantly and eternally disqualifying sin, but this is a CRIME, and cursed is anyone who helped cover it up.
