Gateway megachurch founding pastor Robert Morris, a onetime spiritual advisor to Donald Trump, has resigned after admitting he sexually abused a girl in the 1980s.
The church’s board of elders accepted his resignation Tuesday, saying in a statement that though they had known about an “extramarital relationship,” they did not know the circumstances or the age of the victim.
The abuse took place before Texas-based Gateway was founded, but while Morris was a pastor at Shady Grove Church, which would become one of the megachurch’s 11 locations.
“The elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’s extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with ‘a young lady’ and not abuse of a 12-year-old child,” the church said in a statement obtained by Dallas NBC affiliate KXAS. “Even though it occurred many years before Gateway was established, as leaders of the church, we regret that we did not have the information that we now have.”
But Cindy Clemishire, who detailed the four years of abuse to evangelical Christian watchdog website The Wartburg Watch, said the church did indeed know those details. She urged a deeper investigation to find more victims and said Morris should have been fired rather than allowed to resign.
“The leadership at Gateway received actual notice of this crime in 2005 when I sent an email directly to Robert Morris’ Gateway email address,” the now 54-year-old Oklahoma grandmother said in a statement through her attorney, Boz Tchividjian, as reported by The Christian Post. An elder “received and responded to my email, acknowledging that the sexual abuse began on December 25, 1982, when I was 12 years old.”
She also expressed skepticism about the scope of Gateway’s investigation, urging it to be expanded beyond the years of her abuse.
“This is just the beginning,” Clemishire said. “I wholeheartedly and sadly believe I am not the only victim.”
Gateway did not immediately respond to the Daily News’ request for comment.
With News Wire Services
