The pastor of a Texas megachurch has resigned after a lady stated he had sexually abused her on a number of events within the Eighties, starting when she was 12.Gateway Church’s board of elders stated in a press release Tuesday that they’d accepted the resignation of Robert Morris, the church’s senior pastor and founder. The board stated it had employed a regulation agency to conduct an unbiased evaluate to ensure they “have an entire understanding of the occasions” from 1982 to 1987.The allegations got here to gentle Friday on the non secular watchdog weblog The Wartburg Watch. Cindy Clemishire, Morris’ accuser, informed The Dallas Morning Information in an interview Saturday that she met Morris in 1981, when he was a touring preacher and started preaching at her household’s church in Oklahoma. She stated Morris and his spouse and younger son grew to become near her household. She stated he was staying at her home in 1982 when he requested her to come back to his room. He informed her to put on his mattress after which started touching her inappropriately, stated Clemishire, now 54.She stated the abuse continued for in regards to the subsequent four-and-a-half years. The Related Press usually doesn’t title individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted except they arrive ahead publicly, as Clemishire has executed.When requested in regards to the allegations by The Christian Submit, Morris, 62, stated in a press release to the publication that when he was in his early 20s he was “concerned in inappropriate sexual conduct with a younger woman in a house the place I used to be staying.”“It was kissing and petting and never intercourse, nevertheless it was mistaken,” he stated within the assertion. “This conduct occurred on a number of events over the following few years.”The board stated that earlier than Friday, they “didn’t have all the info of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the sufferer, together with her age on the time and the size of the abuse.” They stated 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 baby.”The church, based mostly within the Dallas suburb of Southlake, was based by Morris in 2000 and has a number of places within the space and says over 100,000 folks attend every weekend. Morris, the founding pastor, has been politically lively. 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 electronic mail on the church.
The pastor of a Texas megachurch has resigned after a lady stated he had sexually abused her on a number of events within the Eighties, starting when she was 12.
Gateway Church’s board of elders stated in a press release Tuesday that they’d accepted the resignation of Robert Morris, the church’s senior pastor and founder. The board stated it had employed a regulation agency to conduct an unbiased evaluate to ensure they “have an entire understanding of the occasions” from 1982 to 1987.
The allegations got here to gentle Friday on the non secular watchdog weblog The Wartburg Watch. Cindy Clemishire, Morris’ accuser, informed The Dallas Morning Information in an interview Saturday that she met Morris in 1981, when he was a touring preacher and started preaching at her household’s church in Oklahoma. She stated Morris and his spouse and younger son grew to become near her household. She stated he was staying at her home in 1982 when he requested her to come back to his room. He informed her to put on his mattress after which started touching her inappropriately, stated Clemishire, now 54.
She stated the abuse continued for in regards to the subsequent four-and-a-half years. The Related Press usually doesn’t title individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted except they arrive ahead publicly, as Clemishire has executed.
When requested in regards to the allegations by The Christian Submit, Morris, 62, stated in a press release to the publication that when he was in his early 20s he was “concerned in inappropriate sexual conduct with a younger woman in a house the place I used to be staying.”
“It was kissing and petting and never intercourse, nevertheless it was mistaken,” he stated within the assertion. “This conduct occurred on a number of events over the following few years.”
The board stated that earlier than Friday, they “didn’t have all the info of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the sufferer, together with her age on the time and the size of the abuse.” They stated 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 baby.”
The church, based mostly within the Dallas suburb of Southlake, was based by Morris in 2000 and has a number of places within the space and says over 100,000 folks attend every weekend. Morris, the founding pastor, has been politically lively. 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 electronic mail on the church.
