A Texas megachurch in the Dallas suburbs has removed several elders after launching an investigation into abuse allegations against Robert Morris, the church’s founder and former advisor to Donald Trump.
Morris resigned from the Gateway Church in June after admitting to having “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” in the 1980s. His resignation came after Cindy Clemishire said he molested her when she was 12 years old.
Morris was a member of Trump’s faith advisory board, and his church hosted the former president on its Dallas campus in 2020 for a discussion on race relations and the economy. However, Trump’s campaign told The New York Times Morris has not been involved in his 2024 bid for the White House.
Now, a law firm hired by the Gateway Church to investigate the claims says they found a group of elders and staffers who knew Clemishire was 12 at the time of the abuse she reported, Fox4 reports. Another group knew about the allegations but did not ask questions, the investigation revealed.
Clemishire said she told Gateway Church leaders more than once about her abuse, according to Fox4.
When Morris resigned, the Gateway Church Board of Elders said they previously “did not have all of the facts of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the length of the abuse.”
Now, the elders in both groups have been let go, Fox4 reported. The employees included in these groups will now be barred from becoming elders.
"We must be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that our culture allowed this truth to be buried for too long," Gateway Church Elder Tra Willbanks said, according to Fox4. "At some point in the past, the culture of Gateway became one where power was centralized and the leader at the top was surrounded by people who wanted to protect him. Some of them at all cost.”
"You also need to know that Gateway Church is currently and fully cooperating with an ongoing criminal investigation, the details of which we can’t share with you at this time," Willbanks added.
Clemishire, now 52, said that Morris and his wife were staying at her family’s home when she was 12. She said he asked her to come into his room, where he told her to lay on his bed and began touching her.
She said the abuse continued until 1987, when she told her parents.
In 2007, J Shelby Sharpe, a lawyer for Morris, reportedly claimed it was the child who was actually to blame.
“It was your client who initiated inappropriate behavior by coming into my client’s bedroom and getting in bed with him, which my client should not have allowed to happen,” Sharpe wrote in a letter obtained by NBC News. Sharpe told the outlet he didn’t know at the time Clemishire was a child during the reported abuse.
In a statement put out before his resignation, Morris insisted that he did not have intercourse with Clemishire.
“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. It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong,” he said.
The Independent has contacted Trump’s campaign for comment. Gateway Church declined to comment.
