A Texas pastor who served as Donald Trump’s ‘spiritual advisor’ admitted to sexually assaulting a minor decades ago but tried to dismiss the accusation as just “kissing and petting.”
According to a report from The Daily Beast, a woman, identified as Cindy Clemishire, told The Wartburg Watch, a religious watchdog blog that Robert Morris, the pastor of Texas’ Gateway Church, molested her in 1982 when she was 12-years-old.
Clemishire told The Wartburg Watch that her family met Morris in 1981 when he was a traveling evangelist married to his current wife. Her family became close with the Morrises and would sometimes take trips together.
Clemishire said she thought nothing of visiting a family friend in his bedroom on Christmas night in 1982 when Morris asked her to. But Morris, then-20-years-old, had other ideas.
Clemishire said he told her to lie down on her back and touched her stomach. He told her to close her eyes. Then he touched her breasts and felt under her panties. He then warned her not to tell anyone “because it will ruin everything.”
The sexual abuse continued for four-and-a-half years until Clemishire confided in a close friend who told her she should tell her parents. When her father found out, he told the lead pastor at Shady Grove Church, where Morris was stationed at the time, that if he didn’t “get out of ministry,” he would get the police involved.
That threat forced Morris to step down.
He eventually returned to the ministry two years later, claiming he had received the blessing of Clemishire’s father to do so. She denies it.
“My father never ever gave his blessing on Robert returning to ministry! My father told him he’s lucky he didn’t kill him. I am mortified that he is telling the world my dad gave his blessing! Of course, we forgive because we are called to biblically forgive those who sin against us. But that does not mean he is supposed to go on without repercussions,” she said.
After returning to the ministry, Morris founded Gateway Church in 2000 which has a weekly attendance of about 100,000, making it one of the largest megachurches in the country. This has opened doors for Morris. In 2016, Trump appointed him to his spiritual advisory board.
Morris dismissed abusing Clemishire in a statement to The Christian Post when she came forward.
“When I was in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying,” he said, failing to mention that this ‘young lady’ was 12. “It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong. This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years.”
Elders at Gateway Church also told The Christian Post that Morris had disclosed a “moral failure” and had since been absolved.
“Pastor Robert has been open and forthright about a moral failure he had over 35 years ago when he was in his twenties and prior to him starting Gateway Church. He has shared publicly from the pulpit the proper biblical steps he took in his lengthy restoration process,” they said.
Clemishire slammed Morris’ apology, saying it is insincere.
“I don’t think that it’s repentant when someone calls a 12-year-old a young lady and tries to just dismiss what happened as just some heavy petting,” she said, according to the Daily Beast. “I don’t believe that’s repentance. There’s no child on earth that any person should ever do that to. It’s just unacceptable. There’s zero excuse.”
