United States: Gateway Church founder Robert Morris pleads guilty to child sexual abuse of a girl in his ministerial care

Proceedings

1. 2025-10-02 · guilty plea and sentence

   Osage County District Court, Oklahoma. Robert Morris, 64, pleaded guilty before Judge Cindy Pickerill to five felony counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child, admitting to abuse that began in 1982 when the victim, Cindy Clemishire, was 12 years old and continued for four years while he stayed with her family as a travelling evangelist in Hominy, Oklahoma. Under a negotiated plea agreement he received a 10-year sentence, of which he served six months in county jail followed by nine and a half years of probation, was ordered to pay $270,000 in restitution, and must register as a sex offender.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• a child's family opening their home to a visiting minister on the strength of his religious standing
• four years of repeated access secured entirely through the family's trust in his ministerial role
• decades of public silence enabled by his continued rise as a nationally prominent pastor