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.<\/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
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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas pastor who founded one of the largest megachurch congregations in the country pleaded guilty on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":274468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-274467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115310100689290477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}