Oklahoma City
The founding father of a Texas megachurch who pleaded responsible to sexually abusing a child in the Eighties was launched Tuesday after serving six months in an Oklahoma jail.
Robert Preston Morris, 64, was launched simply after midnight, in keeping with Osage County Sheriff’s Capt. Matt Clark.
Morris pleaded responsible final 12 months to 5 counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child as a part of a plea settlement beneath which he acquired a 10-year suspended sentence with the primary six months to be served in the Osage County Jail.
The abuse started in 1982 when the sufferer was 12 and Morris was a touring evangelist staying in Hominy, Oklahoma, together with her household, in keeping with Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, whose workplace prosecuted the case.
Morris was the senior pastor of Gateway Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, the place he led one of many nation’s largest megachurches till June 2024 when — confronted with the sufferer’s allegations — he resigned. He was indicted final 12 months by an Oklahoma grand jury.
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Morris should register as a sex offender and shall be supervised by Texas authorities by way of interstate compact. He additionally was ordered to pay his prices of incarceration, together with any medical bills, and restitution to the sufferer.
The sufferer, Cindy Clemishire, who is now in her 50s, didn’t instantly reply Tuesday to a request for remark, however stated in a press release when Morris was sentenced that “justice has finally been served, and the man who manipulated, groomed and abused me as a 12-year-old innocent girl is finally going to be behind bars.” The Associated Press sometimes doesn’t title individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted until they arrive ahead publicly, as Clemishire did.
In a press release launched Tuesday by one in all Morris’ attorneys, Bill Mateja, Morris apologized to Clemishire and her household and praised them for coming ahead.
“What I did to Cindy decades ago was wrong. There is no other word for it, and there is no excuse for it. I am deeply sorry,” Morris stated. “I’ve carried the burden of that flawed for a really very long time, and I’m grateful — genuinely grateful — that the Clemishires had the braveness to deliver this into the sunshine.
“Many years ago, I sought their forgiveness privately, and as Cindy’s father recently noted, he extended that grace to me — a grace I did not deserve and have never taken for granted.”
Gateway Church was based by Morris in 2000. He has been politically energetic and previously served on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board. The church hosted Trump on its Dallas campus in 2020 for a dialogue on race relations and the financial system.