Robert Morris, the Texas megachurch pastor and one-time adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a girl in the 1980s.
On Thursday, October 2, Morris appeared at the Osage County District Court and admitted to five felony counts of indecent acts with a child.
Under a negotiated plea agreement, he was given a 10-year sentence, but he will serve only six months in the county jail. He must also register as a sex offender and pay $250,000 in restitution.
The 64-year-old, who founded Gateway Church in 2000, was handcuffed and taken into custody after Thursday's hearing.
Cindy Clemishire, the woman who accused Morris of molesting her at age 12, sat in the courtroom, surrounded by family, as Morris accepted responsibility.
The plea represents a remarkable fall for Morris, who grew Gateway into a megachurch with tens of thousands of weekly attendees.
His sermons were broadcast to audiences around the world, his books became bestsellers in evangelical circles, and he served as a faith adviser to President Trump.
However, the celebrated career as pastor was rocked when in June 2024 Clemishire publicly accused him of inappropriate behaviour.
Within days, Gateway announced that Morris was stepping down, with the former pastor admitting to a past "moral failure" with a "young lady" in the official statement.
Clemishire was 12 when the abuse began on Christmas night in 1982.
Morris, a travelling evangelist in his early 20s who sometimes stayed with her family in Oklahoma, invited her to his room, where, she said, he instructed her to lie on her back.
He then touched her breasts and felt under her panties, she said, the first of several similar encounters that would span the next few years. "Never tell anyone about this," Clemishire recalled him saying. "It will ruin everything."
Despite informing her parents and leaders at her church in 1987, the police were not informed of the horrific incidents.
In the mid-2000s, the 55-year-old approached Gateway leaders and Morris to seek $50,000 in restitution for all she spent in therapy to process the trauma.
At the time, Morris' lawyers penned a letter, suggesting Clemishire bore responsibility for the "inappropriate behaviour" between the two when she was a child.
In a prepared statement, Clemishire told Morris in court his abuse "rippled into every part" of her life, straining relationships, damaging her marriages and affecting the way she raised her children.
She said she prayed that God helped him to understand the depth of the pain he inflicted.
"Let me be clear," she said. "There is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child. We were never in an 'inappropriate relationship.' I was not a 'young lady' but a child. You committed a crime against me."
Clemishire's 82-year-old father silently wept as she spoke. Her sister, Karen Black, also testified, sharing how the abuse shattered every member of their family.
Notably, in November, Gateway Church announced it had removed four elders after an investigation by an outside law firm concluded some had known about Clemishire's allegations years ago but failed to act.
