Texas church removes four elders over Trump-linked founder’s abuse of girl, 12, in 1980s | Texas

A Dallas-area Christian megachurch has removed four of its elders following an internal investigation into how the institution handled revelations of child sexual abuse by its founder, a former spiritual adviser to Donald Trump.

A Gateway Church official announced during a service Saturday that the ousted leaders either knew Robert Morris molested a girl for several years, beginning in 1982 when she was 12, or “failed to inquire further” after being informed about it. Dallas Morning News reported.

Gateway did not identify the removed leaders, but the Morning News found that four names had been removed from the church’s elders page: Jeremy Carrasco, Kevin Grove, Gayland Lawshe and Thomas Miller. Remaining were Kenneth W Fambro II, Dane Minor and Tra Willbanks, who made Saturday’s announcement about the other elders who had belonged to what was essentially Gateway’s executive board.

Willbanks added that those who knew Morris’ abuse survivor “was 12 at the time of the abuse” but failed to act “are fundamentally wrong and simply cannot – and will not – be tolerated”.

The announcement by Willbanks added another chapter to a scandal centered on a figure with ties to Trump’s two former presidential candidates. And it came days before the election on Tuesday, where Trump is also running.

Morris resigned in June over his admission that he engaged in “inappropriate sexual conduct” with a girl – who has publicly identified herself as Cindy Clemishire – between 1982 and 1987, starting when she was a girl. He made it a point to say that the sexual contact stopped soon after intercourse, although he described “kissing and caressing … (it) was wrong”.

Morris has said he took time off from preaching in 1987 after confessing the abuse to his superiors at the time, but details of the abuse were not immediately public. He later founded the Gateway Church in 2000 in Southlake, Texas, and it grew into one of the largest institutions of its kind in the United States with more than 100,000 congregants.

The Christian Post religious publications first reported the claims of Clemishire, which precipitated Morris’s resignation. The Gateway Church condemned Morris’ actions, while initially maintaining that it did not have all the details of the “inappropriate relationship between (him) and the victim, including her age at the time and the length of the abuse”.

In a statement to The Guardian, church elders claimed to have believed that Morris had entered into an “extramarital relationship … with ‘a young lady'” and had no prior indication that he had sexually abused a child. But as described Saturday by Willbanks, the results of an internal investigation by Texas’ Haynes and Boone law firm apparently contradicted that in the case of most of the church’s elders.

Willbanks said he could not discuss the case further because of lawsuits and a pending criminal investigation. He did not elaborate on exactly who or which authorities were investigating.

Morris was reportedly among half a dozen people who refused to cooperate with Hayne and Boone’s investigation. Willbanks also said Morris responded to Clemishire’s disclosure of his abuse by instructing church staff to issue a statement minimizing her account.

Morris, 63, had previously held prominent positions with Trump when The Apprentice star won the presidency in 2016 and then lost it in 2020.

Morris was on Trump’s evangelical advisory board for the first of those campaigns. And in the second of those campaigns, he participated in a roundtable discussion with the former president and faith leaders at Gateway.

Trump’s team have said Morris has not been part of the Republican nominee’s third run for the White House, which culminated Tuesday against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Morris was a traveling evangelist at the time he began abusing Clemishire and was friends with her family. Clemishire said Morris asked for — and received — forgiveness from his father. But her family did not want him to ever return to the service.

Another official who resigned from Gateway Church after Clemishire spoke was Morris’ son, James, who launched a new church in September.

At one point, during a recorded phone call, Morris offered to pay Clemishire to keep quiet about her abuse, NBC News previously reported with reference to a transcript.

Still, he reportedly hung up after Clemishire asked for $2 million.