A former Texas megachurch founding pastor and onetime Trump spiritual adviser was indicted Wednesday on five child sexual abuse charges dating back to the 1980s.
Robert Preston Morris, 63, had resigned from Gateway megachurch last June after admitting he had acted inappropriately with “a young lady” in the 1980s, when he was 21 and married with a child, before Gateway was founded.
Morris was a member of President Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board in June 2016 and hosted a roundtable for him at Gateway’s Dallas campus in 2020.
While a traveling evangelist in the 1980s, Morris would stay with the family of Cindy Clemishire in Oklahoma, where he started abusing her on Christmas Day 1982. The abuse continued during his visits through at least 1985, according to the indictment, which charges him with five felony counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child.
“There can be no tolerance for those who sexually prey on children,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement. “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.”
The allegations against Morris came to light last summer when Clemishire, now a 55-year-old grandmother, detailed the four years of abuse to The Wartburg Watch, an evangelical Christian watchdog blog. Morris told the church he had engaged in “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying,” according to the Christian Post.
He said he attended church counseling and had repented. In November, church leaders removed four elders they said knew of the abuse and its circumstances.
Clemishire has urged a deeper investigation to find more victims. On Wednesday she expressed gratitude amid hopes that “justice will ultimately prevail” in the case.
“After almost 43 years, the law has finally caught up with Robert Morris for the horrific crimes he committed against me as a child,” Clemishire said in a statement. “Now, it is time for the legal system to hold him accountable.”
With News Wire Services