Texas megachurch pastor Robert Morris resigns after woman says he sexually abused her

DALLAS (AP) — The pastor of a Texas megachurch has resigned after a girl 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 an announcement Tuesday that they’d accepted the resignation of Robert Morris, the church’s senior pastor and founder. The board stated it had employed a legislation agency to to conduct an unbiased assessment to verify they “have an entire understanding of the occasions” 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 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 turned near her household. She stated he was staying at her home in 1982 when he requested her to come back to his room. He instructed her to put on his mattress after which started touching her inappropriately, stated Clemishire, now 52.

She stated the abuse continued for in regards to the subsequent four-and-a-half years. The Related Press sometimes doesn’t title individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted until they arrive ahead publicly, as Clemishire has carried out.

When requested in regards to the allegations by The Christian Put up, Morris, 62, stated in an announcement to the publication that when he was in his early 20s he was “concerned in inappropriate sexual habits with a younger girl in a house the place I used to be staying.”

“It was kissing and petting and never intercourse, but it surely was mistaken,” he stated within the assertion. “This habits occurred on a number of events over the following few years.”

The board stated that earlier than Friday, they “didn’t have all the details 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 instances all through his ministry was not that it was “abuse of a 12-year-old baby.”

The church, primarily based 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 individuals 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 financial system.

Morris didn’t instantly reply Tuesday to a request for remark despatched to his electronic mail on the church.