Five Institutional Lessons From the Multimillion-Dollar Disruption at Gateway Church

[Stan]

When the civil lawsuit pitting Gateway Church against its founding pastor, Robert Morris, quietly vanished from the public dockets of a Tarrant County court, the legal battle did not end.…

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[Asia Joe]

Quote

The founder of a Texas megachurch who resigned last year after a woman in Oklahoma accused the pastor of sexually abusing her in the 1980s pleaded guilty Thursday to five counts of lewd and indecent acts with a child, authorities said.

Robert Preston Morris, 64, entered the pleas before a judge in Oklahoma’s Osage County as part of a plea agreement, according to the state attorney general’s office.

The alleged abuse began in 1982 when the victim was 12 and Morris was a traveling evangelist staying in Hominy, Oklahoma, with her family, according to the statement by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond. The abuse allegedly continued for four years.

 

Morris, the senior pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, until his resignation, was indicted by an Oklahoma grand jury last year. Under the plea agreement, Morris received a 10-year suspended sentence with the first six months to be served in the Osage County Jail.

The victim, Cindy Clemishire, who is now 55, said in a statement 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 typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Clemishire has done.

This is just shocking to me, that 40 years later, someone speaks up and something happens. 

Should there be be a statue of limitations? 

 

[Asia Joe]

Oklahoma

A survivor who was a minor at the time of the incident can file a claim before they reach age 45.

For adult survivors, the window is two years from the incident or five years after the perpetrator is released from jail, whichever is later.