{"id":29854,"date":"2025-10-03T07:25:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T11:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=29854"},"modified":"2025-10-03T07:25:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T11:25:51","slug":"texas-megachurch-pastor-pleads-guilty-to-child-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/10\/03\/texas-megachurch-pastor-pleads-guilty-to-child-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas megachurch pastor pleads guilty to child abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Texas pastor who founded one of the largest megachurch congregations in the country pleaded guilty on Thursday to sexually abusing a girl of 12 in Oklahoma in the 1980s.<\/b><\/p>\n

Robert Morris, 64, entered the guilty plea during a hearing on Thursday, admitting to felony charges of lewd or indecent acts with a child.<\/p>\n

As a part of the plea agreement, the former leader of Gateway Church was handed a 10-year sentence, but will only serve six months in jail and be on probation for the rest of the time.<\/p>\n

He must also register as a sex offender and pay $250,000 (\u00a3185,000) in restitution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Morris attended the hearing at a courthouse in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, alongside his wife, his adult children and several of their spouses, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.<\/p>\n

He was handcuffed and detained after Thursday’s hearing, NBC News reports.<\/p>\n

The charges stem from Morris’ abuse of Cindy Clemishere when she was 12 years old in 1982, according to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office.<\/p>\n

In court on Thursday, Ms Clemishire told Morris through tears that his abuse had “rippled into every part of her life”, according to NBC News.<\/p>\n

Morris was working as a traveling evangelist and was living with Cindy’s family in Hominy, Oklahoma. During that time, she said, Morris abused her for four years.<\/p>\n

Ms Clemishere and her family were in court on Thursday for Morris’ plea, according to NBC.<\/p>\n

Ms Clemishire, now 55, first publicly accused the pastor of sexually abusing her in 2024, leading Gateway to announce that he was stepping down.<\/p>\n

He released a statement saying he had had a “moral failure” with a “young lady”. The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office began an investigation shortly after.<\/p>\n

Speaking in court on Thursday, Ms Clemishire said there was “no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child”.<\/p>\n

“We were never in an ‘inappropriate relationship,'” she said. “I was not a ‘young lady’ but a child.”<\/p>\n

She said she had first told her parents and leaders at the church about the abuse in 1987 but no one called the police.<\/p>\n

Morris founded Gateway Church in 2000. At its peak, the group had 100,000 active attendees, with nine locations in Texas and surrounding areas, according to the church.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump named Morris his spiritual adviser and a member of his envangelical advisory committee in 2016.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Texas pastor who founded one of the largest megachurch congregations in the country pleaded guilty on Thursday to sexually abusing a girl of 12 in Oklahoma in the 1980s. Robert Morris, 64, entered the […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[2905,11657,11659,11656,1048,11658,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-29854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-child-sexual-abuse","10":"tag-gateway-church","11":"tag-hominy","12":"tag-lewd-or-indecent-acts-with-a-child","13":"tag-oklahoma","14":"tag-pawhuska","15":"tag-texas","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29856,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854\/revisions\/29856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}