A Texas MAGAchruch pastor who served on convicted felon former President Trump’s “Spiritual Advisory Board” has responded to an accusation from a now 56 year-old woman that the pastor sexually molested her on Christmas in 1980 when she was 12 and he was 20 with an admission that he had indeed committed “inappropriate sexual behavior” with her, the Daily Beast reports.
Robert Morris, leader of the Gateway Church, an Evangelical chain with multiple congregations across the Lone Star State claiming 100,000 weekly attendees for services, told the Christian Post there had been “kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong,” while not acknowledging the woman’s age at the time. Morris supposedly had been caught by his wife and left the ministry industry until returning two years later, allegedly with the blessing of the girl’s father and elders of the congregation he had served with. In 2000 Morris launched the Gateway Church, whose PR team this weekend said “Pastor Robert has been open and forthright about a moral failure he had over 35 years ago when he was in his twenties and prior to him starting Gateway Church. He has shared publicly from the pulpit the proper biblical steps he took in his lengthy restoration process.”
The woman, Cindy Clemishire, told the Dallas Morning News that her family never condoned Morris nor does she think he belongs anywhere near where he is now. “We don’t believe anyone that’s done anything like this should be an overseer to anyone in any industry, but especially in the church. I don’t think that it’s repentant when someone calls a 12 year-old a young lady and tries to just dismiss what happened as just some heavy petting,” Clemishire said. “I don’t believe that’s repentance. There’s no child on earth that any person should ever do that to. It’s just unacceptable.”