Trigger warning: discussion of sexual assault
For much of 2024, one of the biggest stories that wasn’t related to the presidential election centered around one of the most outrageous scandals of the #MeToo/#ChurchToo era. In case you missed it, last June, Robert Morris, a former spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, had a four-decade-old lie finally catch up with him. He was forced to resign in disgrace from Gateway Church, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex-based megachurch he’d founded in 2000, after Cindy Clemishire revealed that Morris had groomed and molested her for four-and-a-half years starting in 1982. Cindy was 12 years old at the time.
For years, Morris told anyone who would listen that he had “moral failure” with a “young lady” in the 1980s. Cindy spent years attempting to get someone to listen to her, and finally found someone willing to do so in longtime victim advocate Dee Parsons. Morris tried to spin the same line he’d peddled since founding Gateway, and before then while he was at Shady Grove Church, a church in nearby Grand Prairie that merged with Gateway in 2015. But when it became apparent that those lies were no longer going to fly, Morris resigned.
Well, late Wednesday afternoon, Morris firmly entered the “find out” phase when an Oklahoma grand jury indicted him on five counts of child sexual abuse.
“In December 1982, Morris was a traveling evangelist visiting in Hominy with the family of the alleged victim, who was 12 at the time. The indictment alleges Morris’ sexual misconduct began that Christmas and continued over the next four years. In all, Morris faces five counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child,” a statement from the Office of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond shared with The Christian Post on the charges against 63-year-old Morris, said.
“There can be no tolerance for those who sexually prey on children,” said Drummond, who once served as Clemishire’s attorney as she sought to get justice in the past. “This case is all the more despicable because the alleged perpetrator was a pastor who exploited his position. The victim in this case has waited far too many years for justice to be done.”
Read the indictment here. It spells out five instances between 1982 and 1985 in which Morris molested Cindy, identified as “C. C.” in the indictment. If convicted on all charges, he could potentially spend the rest of his life in prison.
Gateway first revealed the existence of a criminal investigation on the weekend before Election Day, when Gateway elder Tra Willbanks delivered an executive summary of an internal investigation into Morris’ depravities. He revealed that there was a lot he couldn’t tell anyone because said investigation was well underway. Through my contacts with a very reliable source who had been sending information to the investigators, I reported in late November that Drummond was leading the investigation—and that it had been well underway since at least July.
For those of you keeping score, by the time I learned about the investigation, it had been churning on for almost five months. That meant Drummond not only believed there was something to prosecute, but was also trying to find a way around potential statutes of limitations issues. Last year, Cindy’s lawyer, longtime abuse advocate Boz Tchividjian, suggested that any statutes of limitations for crimes potentially committed by Morris had long since run out. However, in a press release announcing the indictment, Drummond argued that the statute of limitations doesn’t apply because Morris was never a resident of Oklahoma at any point during his molestation of Cindy.
Morris now potentially faces the worst legal hurt any pastor of his stature has faced since Jim Bakker was racked up for fraud four decades ago. If convicted on all charges, he faces a minimum of 15 years in prison—three years per count. He faces a maximum of 100 years, or 20 years per count. My money is on him facing somewhere around 20 to 30 years. Remember, the guy was already a minister at the time, and he groomed Cindy over a number of years.
There are a lot of other people who ought to be very afraid now that this indictment has come down. In announcing the results of the internal investigation, Willbanks revealed that several Gateway elders and staffers had known well before Cindy finally found someone to listen to her that she was most assuredly not a “young lady” when Morris molested her. Willbanks added that others knew enough that they should have asked more questions—and didn’t. Which means a lot of people connected to Gateway have a lot of explaining to do. In particular, anyone at Gateway or Shady Grove who knew Cindy wasn’t just a “young lady” and didn’t act better have lawyers on speed dial.
In a statement, Cindy said she was “deeply grateful” to Drummond and others who “worked tirelessly to make this day possible.” That it’s even made it this far is a huge victory in and of itself. After all, many cases involving predatory pastors never even make it to trial, in large part because of the culture of victim shaming and victim blaming that is still very prevalent in the evangelical world.
Frankly, Morris is on a death wish if he lets this go any further. The press release in which he admitted to inappropriate behavior is almost tantamount to a confession, and putting Cindy on the stand would pretty much assure he gets crucified by the jury. Indeed, his only chance short of taking a plea deal is to keep any parents or grandparents off the jury. Moreover, he didn’t do himself any favors with the way he behaved in 2007, when Cindy tried to send him the bill for decades of counseling. Morris crassly claimed that Cindy had “initiated inappropriate behavior” with Morris by coming into Morris’s room and getting into his bed.
As much as today is a victory for Cindy, it’s a victory for other victims of sexual abuse in the church. It is long past time that someone was not only willing to listen, but make the effort to see that justice is done.
