Gateway Church Removes Multiple Elders Who Knew About Robert Morris’ Sex Abuse Crimes, But Never Said Anything
Four months after news broke that Gateway Church Pastor and founder Robert Morris sexually molested a 12-year-old girl when he was in his twenties, resulting in him being permanently separated from Gateway amid an implosion of his personal and professional life, an internal investigation has revealed that multiple elders knew about Morris’ crimes before his victim Cindy Clemishire shared her story publicly in mid-June, resulting in them being removed from their positions at the church.
During Saturday’s service, Elder Tra Willbanks revealed that following the results of an internal investigation led by law firm Haynes & Boone, all of Gateway Church’s elders except for three either knew without a doubt that Morris sexually abused a minor, or had sufficient information to know that she was likely a child when she was abused, but they failed to act and “failed to inquire further.” He explains:
On June 14th of this year, Cindy Clemishire shared her story publicly, clearly stating that she was the one referred to in Robert Morris’ story that he had described as a sexual affair. Contrary to his version, Cindy was not a consenting adult, but rather a child of 12 and a victim of sexual abuse.
Furthermore, she shared that this sexual abuse happened on multiple occasions over four and a half years. On that same evening of June 14th, Robert Morris directed Gateway employees to release a statement that intended to minimize the severity of Cindy’s claims in one final attempt to hide the truth.
As you know, our Gateway Church family was rocked by these revelations. Over the next 48 hours, the elders were able to independently verify critical of Cindy’s story, enabling us to move swiftly to confront Robert Morris.
And when we insisted on meeting with him, he immediately resigned. Despite his resignation, we knew that further investigation was needed, and we knew that we as elders did not have the objectivity or the qualifications to properly investigate.
The church says that they gave the investigating law firm “full access to our staff and internal communications,” where they collected 680 gigabytes of data, reviewed thousands of pages of documents and emails, waived confidentiality agreements, and interviewed dozens of people and leaders. However, “there have been six individuals who have declined to meet in person with Haynes and Boone, including Robert Morris.”
“Haynes and Boone did not learn of any other allegations of sexual assault by Robert Morris. So no other abuse by him has been reported or uncovered in the investigation. We learned from the investigation about what elders knew before June 14th, 2024 and what actions they took or failed to take.
We now know that there were elders and employees at Gateway who knew before June 14th, 2024 that Cindy was 12 at the time of the abuse. Additionally, we also learned there were other individuals who were notified in the years prior to June 14th, 2024, about these allegations of abuse, but failed to inquire further.
In other words, there were two groups. There was one group who knew without a doubt that Cindy was 12 when this abuse began, and there was a second group who knew of allegations of sexual abuse by Robert Morris, who had enough information that they should have led them to ask more questions and inquire further, but they did not.Both groups are fundamentally wrong and simply cannot and will not be tolerated at Gateway Church. As a result, we have decided to draw a very bright line here based on biblical and moral values and the values of our church family. And we can report to you that as of today, no individuals in either group serves as an elder, is employed by, or works at Gateway Church. They have been removed.”
The names of the elders that were kicked out were not listed, but Gateway removed several profiles from their staff page in the last few days, which can be seen in archived before and after pictures.
Willbanks concludes by noting that they want to share more information, but are constricted as “Gateway Church is currently the target of various pending and or threatened litigation matters, including some financial demands that we have received from Robert Morris, which to be clear, we are rejecting.”
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