The pastor of a Texas megachurch has resigned after a woman said he had sexually abused her on multiple occasions in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12.
Gateway Church’s board of elders said in a statement Tuesday that they’d accepted the resignation of Robert Morris, the church’s senior pastor and founder. The board said it had hired a law firm to conduct an independent review to make sure they “have a complete understanding of the events” from 1982 to 1987.
The allegations came to light Friday on the religious watchdog blog The Wartburg Watch. Cindy Clemishire, Morris’ accuser, told The Dallas Morning News in an interview Saturday that she met Morris in 1981, when he was a traveling preacher and began preaching at her family’s church in Oklahoma. She said Morris and his wife and young son became close to her family. She said he was staying at her house in 1982 when he asked her to come to his room. He told her to lay on his bed and then began touching her inappropriately, said Clemishire, now 52.
She said the abuse continued for about the next four-and-a-half years. The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Clemishire has done.
When asked about the allegations by The Christian Post, Morris, 62, said in a statement to the publication that when he was in his early 20s he 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 in the statement. “This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years.”
