The pastor of a Texas megachurch has resigned after a woman mentioned he had sexually abused her on a number of events in the 1980s, starting when she was 12.
Gateway Church’s board of elders mentioned in an announcement Tuesday that they’d accepted the resignation of Robert Morris, the church’s senior pastor and founder. The board mentioned it had employed a regulation agency to to conduct an unbiased evaluation to verify they “have a complete understanding of the events” from 1982 to 1987.
The allegations got here to mild Friday on the non secular watchdog weblog The Wartburg Watch. Cindy Clemishire, Morris’ accuser, instructed The Dallas Morning News in an interview Saturday that she met Morris in 1981, when he was a touring preacher and commenced preaching at her household’s church in Oklahoma. She mentioned Morris and his spouse and younger son turned near her household. She mentioned he was staying at her home in 1982 when he requested her to return to his room. He instructed her to put on his mattress after which started touching her inappropriately, mentioned Clemishire, now 52.
She mentioned the abuse continued for about the subsequent four-and-a-half years. The Associated Press sometimes doesn’t identify individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted except they arrive ahead publicly, as Clemishire has executed.
Pastor Robert Morris applauds throughout a roundtable dialogue at Gateway Church Dallas Campus, Thursday, June 11, 2020, in Dallas. A press release issued on Tuesday, June 18, 2024, mentioned that Morris had resigned after a woman mentioned he had abused her on a number of events in the 1980s, starting when she was 12. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
When requested about the allegations by The Christian Post, Morris, 62, mentioned in an announcement to the publication that when he was in his early 20s he was “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,” he mentioned in the assertion. “This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years.”
The board mentioned that earlier than Friday, they “did not have all of the facts of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the length of the abuse.” They mentioned that their understanding of the “extramarital relationship” that Morris had mentioned many occasions all through his ministry was not that it was “abuse of a 12-year-old child.”
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The church, based mostly in the Dallas suburb of Southlake, was based by Morris in 2000 and has a number of areas in the space and says over 100,000 folks attend every weekend. Morris, the founding pastor, has been politically energetic. He was amongst these on former President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board. The church hosted Trump on its Dallas campus in 2020 for a dialogue on race relations and the economic system.
Morris didn’t instantly reply Tuesday to a request for remark despatched to his e mail at the church.
