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A pastor has been fired from a Texas megachurch over “a moral issue” just months after its founder was publicly accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.
The Gateway Church, based in the Dallas suburb of Southlake, said executive pastor Kemtal Glasgow was fired because of a “moral failure.”
Church elder Tra Willbanks said in a statement: “Kemtal Glasgow is no longer employed at Gateway. We were informed last week of a moral issue which we believe, as elders, disqualifies him from serving in the role that he had at Gateway.”
Willbanks did not go into further details about the alleged moral failure, but told the congregation: “We love this family, we love his wife and his kids, and we want to come alongside them during this difficult time and help them find restoration and healing that they need as a family.”
The church confirmed Glasgow’s departure was not linked to the case involving Robert Morris, Donald Trump’s former faith adviser. The church was founded by Morris in 2000 and has multiple locations in the area.
Morris resigned from the church in June after admitting to “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.”
His accuser, Cindy Clemishire, previously claimed that the pastor started abusing her on Christmas Day in 1982.
Clemishire, 52, said that Morris and his wife were staying at her family’s home when he asked her to come into his room, where he told her to lay on his bed and began touching her inappropriately. She said the abuse continued until 1987 when she told her parents.
Twenty-five years after the incident, a lawyer for Morris — J Shelby Sharpe — reportedly claimed it was the child who was actually to blame.
“It was your client,” wrote Sharpe, in a letter obtained by NBC, “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.”
The letter, sent in February 2007, was one in a series of exchanges that year between Sharpe and Gentner Drummond, a lawyer who represented Clemishire at the time.
Clemishire recently revealed she had been seeking $50,000 in restitution from Morris to cover the cost of counseling. Morris had allegedly offered to pay $25,000, but the talks fell apart because she was not willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement, Clemishire said.
Sharpe told NBC News that he had no recollection of a $25,000 settlement offer or NDA demand and that he no longer represents Morris. He also denied to the outlet any knowledge that Clemishire had been a child at the time of the alleged incident.
In a statement put out before his resignation, Morris admitted the “inappropriate sexual behavior” but insisted that he had not had intercourse with the young girl.
“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 board previously said that they “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.”
On June 18, Gateway Church’s board of elders announced they’d accepted the resignation from Morris and hired a law firm to conduct an independent review to make sure they “have a complete understanding of the events” from 1982 to 1987.
Morris, the founding pastor, has been politically active. He was among those on former Trump’s evangelical advisory board. The Gateway Church hosted Trump on its Dallas campus in 2020 for a discussion on race relations and the economy.
