Robert Morris Pushes Back, Says Gateway Church Knew Sex Abuse Details
Robert Morris has pushed back on Gateway’s assertion that it didn’t know the full details of his sexual abuse of Cindy Clemishire in the 1980s, including that she was only 12 when the abuse started.
According to court documents filed by Morris in Tarrant County, Morris asserted that Gateway elders “knew the facts pertaining to Pastor Morris’s admittedly highly inappropriate relationship with [Clemishire] as early as 2005 and most certainly by August of 2007.”
The court documents are part of his effort to seek Christian arbitration in settling the dispute over his retirement benefits.
He then included a letter from former Gateway Executive Pastor Tom Lane summarizing a specially called meeting of the elders in which they deliberated whether Morris needed to discuss the details of the “situation” with Clemishire. They decided not to since he had been through a “restoration process” following the original revelations.
One of the issues of contention between Gateway and Morris has been whether they knew Clemishire was just 12 years old when Morris began abusing her.
Morris pointed to a demand letter written by Clemishire’s attorney, now Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, in 2007 that referred to the sexual assaults beginning when Clemishire was just 12 years old. He said the board of elders received a copy of the letter at the time it was written.
Drummond secured an indictment against Morris in Oklahoma for five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child.
Morris said emails were sent in 2011 to the elders and members of the Gateway staff by truthrevealed@hush.com that threatened to reveal Morris’ abuse of Clemishire to the media. The emails again referred to Clemishire’s age.
In response, Morris drafted a proposed statement to share with the Gateway congregation that also acknowledged Clemishire’s age at the time the abuse started.
“I have been told that it was about 2 weeks before her 13th birthday. Although I knew she was underage, I was shocked to hear this because she appeared much older. My behavior was completely inexcusable and I am 100% at fault,” the draft statement said.
Morris claims he was advised by legal counsel not to make the public statement due to “privacy laws.”
In his court filings, Morris said he was bringing this documentation of Gateway’s knowledge to light due to the church’s “repeatedly and misleadingly accusing Pastor Morris of lacking transparency” and “public blame shifting.”
On April 23, 2025, Morris sent a letter to the Institute for Christian Conciliation, a division of Ambassadors of Reconciliation, with a demand for arbitration between himself and Gateway Church seeking enforcement of the terms of a deferred defined benefit plan and the intellectual property rights to his books and other works. The claim is for over $1 million.
Gateway Church then sought the intervention of a Tarrant County district court to stop an arbitration proceeding, claiming Morris went straight to demanding arbitration without satisfying the condition of agreeing to mediate. The church asserts it “did not foreclose a negotiated or mediated resolution altogether.”
In his most recent court filing, Morris says he still stands ready to mediate and sent such an offer on May 19, stating, “Morris will agree to mediate the case in Tarrant County provided that such mediation take place with all due haste.”
He asked the court to order the parties to mediation and to grant his request to compel the parties to arbitration before the Institute for Christian Conciliation.
Morris also filed a motion to disqualify Gateway’s attorney David Middlebrook due to a conflict of interest because he previously represented Gateway and Morris in matters related to the sexual abuse allegations.
The motion asserts that Middlebrook and his law firm must be disqualified based on Texas ethics rules for lawyers and to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
This article has been republished with permission from Ministry Watch.
Kim Roberts is a freelance writer who holds a Juris Doctorate with honors from Baylor University and an undergraduate degree in government from Angelo State University. She has three young adult children who were home schooled and is happily married to her husband of 28 years.