In letter, Southlake megachurch pastor’s lawyer blamed 12-year-old girl for her own abuse
An attorney for the former lead pastor of a North Texas megachurch wrote in a letter to a sexual abuse survivor that it was her fault the abuse happened when she was 12.
The letter, obtained by NBC News and Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV, shows that in 2007 the attorney for Gateway Church founder and pastor Robert Morris sent a letter to Cindy Clemishire’s lawyer in which he said she initiated the sexual abuse. The abuse, to which Morris has admitted, happened in the 1980s, starting on Christmas Day 1982.
Clemishire was 12 when the abuse started and Morris was 21, she has said. It continued until she was 16.
Morris said in a statement released before he resigned last month from his position as pastor of Southlake-based Gateway Church, which he founded in 2000, that the abuse ended because he was caught by Clemishire’s father. But the father and leaders of the church at which Morris worked at the time did not report the abuse to police. Instead, Morris went to “freedom ministry,” which Gateway Church’s website describes as prayer, counseling and exorcism.
The 2007 letter acknowledging the abuse was sent in response to a demand for a settlement by Clemishire. She’s described her demand as payment for all the psychological care she required as a result of years of abuse.
The letter demanding a settlement said Clemishire was groomed by the pastor. It said Morris led the girl “to believe they were having a special relationship” that had to remain secret or “it would ruin everything.”
In response, the attorney representing Morris blamed her and offered $25,000 instead of the $50,000 she was requesting, Clemishire told NBC News. Negotiations ended because the settlement would require Clemishire to sign a nondisclosure agreement, Clemishire said.
“It was your client who initiated inappropriate behavior by coming into my client’s bedroom and getting in bed with him, which my client should not have allowed to happen,” the February 2007 letter from Morris’ lawyer read.
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It wasn’t the first time Clemishire was blamed for the abuse she survived as a child. She told NBC News that after Morris was caught, the family got a call from Morris’ wife.
“I forgive you,” Clemishire recalled her saying.
Response
Morris’ response to the publicized revelation in June, in a statement to church members that was leaked, admitted to the abuse, which he has called “inappropriate sexual behavior.”
His decision to refer to Clemishire as a “young lady” angered many including local leaders, who pointed out that she was not a “young lady” but an underage child.
Gateway Church didn’t itself respond immediately. It was the next week before the church’s board of elders met with Morris and he resigned. The church elders released a statement saying they weren’t aware of the abuse involving a child and that Morris had spoken about sexual impropriety in his past without specifics.
Clemishire said that wasn’t true, that at least some leaders in the church were aware of the abuse. She said that at one point in the 2000s, she sent an email to Morris and received a response from a church elder that acknowledged it happened.
In its first weekend of services after Morris resigned, a pastor for the church’s campus in Plano said he knew people in the congregation were hurting and angry.
The megachurch’s main Southlake campus was full on that Saturday night and there were protesters outside; that Sunday was a different story.
The Star-Telegram attended the 11 a.m. Sunday service at the church, which featured live worship and a brief address at the opening and close of the service from Jelani Lewis, pastor for Gateway’s Plano campus.
“I’m so sorry. I know that many of us are coming today and we’re all in different places,” Lewis said at the beginning of the service. “Some of us have come in today and we’re heartbroken. Some of us have come in today and we’re angry. Some of us have come in today and we’re not sure what to feel and then some of us have never been more hopeful.”
But in that Sunday service, the sermon was not delivered live. It was a recorded message by a church elder who spoke that Saturday, June 23.
Lawsuits
The church also knew about another instance of child sexual abuse and covered it up, a lawsuit., settled months before Morris’ actions became public, alleged.
The suit said leaders in the church learned that an underage girl was abused by an unnamed church member when she made an outcry to a youth minister. It says the church did not report the abuse tp either authorities or the girl’s parents. It wasn’t until after the parents learned of the abuse independently that church leaders had conversations with them, according to the lawsuit.
Even then, the mother of the child said in the suit she was ostracized and punished by the church for going to Haltom City police to report it. The suit says the church caused evidence to be lost and even coached the abuser on how to tell the narrative of what happened.
In another lawsuit, a woman who worked at the church’s North Richland Hills campus said she was sexually harassed by a pastor, denied job promotions because she was a woman and eventually fired for reporting the harassment to the church’s human resources department.
The church settled both lawsuits with confidential terms, but said in the settlement documents that it did not admit to any wrongdoing.
