Revelations that Gateway Church founder Robert Morris molested a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s sent shockwaves throughout Christian circles last summer.
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More than a year later, Morris pleaded guilty last week to the crime, admitting to five felony counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. As part of a plea agreement, he received a 10-year suspended sentence and will spend six months in jail, register as a sex offender, and pay $270,000 in restitution.
Cindy Clemishire, Morris’s victim, who will be paid these monies, was in the courtroom and read a statement directly to Morris detailing the negative impact of his conduct on her life.
“In my victim statement, I told Robert that, not only did he steal my innocence and basically murdered the woman I was supposed to grow into … he basically built this twisted framework on a foundation that my parents had built with me that was very solid,” Clemishire said. “He began building a framework that was very twisted on what love is, and it … more taught me that abuse is love.”
As Clemishire grew up, she said this dynamic complicated her relationships and her expectations of how a man should treat her.
“Robert did not do anything but teach me that my body was not sacred,” she said. “And that had a major impact on my adult life.”
An Emotional Courtroom Experience
Clemishire said the entire courtroom experience was deeply emotional.
“It was emotional to be sitting next to my dad and holding his hand, knowing the immense feelings that were going through him,” she told CBN News of the courtroom experience. “He loved Robert. … We were like family … I know [it] was extremely painful for him.”
The guilt her father has felt only added to the pain. Despite this, Clemishire also said it was “empowering” to finally be heard by the “world and the law.” She was specifically able to deliver a victim statement directly to Morris’ face — but she said he didn’t react.
“He never looked up,” she said. “He was looking at the table. He was sitting at a table, and he was looking directly down at the table.”
Ultimately, Clemishire said she “never felt a sense of remorse.” She added that Morris had to read the indictments and plead, and that he had the opportunity to openly apologize, but did not do so himself.
The Difficult Part of the Story
Clemishire said it was difficult over the years to have warned so many people about her story, yet to have been mostly overlooked and ignored.
“When you tell so many people that have authority in that religious sector … and some pretty high-up people know … some of the highest up in that part of our religious world, and they just continue to sweep it under the rug,” she said. “They say he’s been restored, they don’t ask about my restoration, they don’t pursue helping me find restoration or my family.”
She continued, “The frustration and the pain just continues to compound exponentially, and so it really just damages the faith in organized religion.”
But Clemishire said she never gave up on her Christian beliefs despite disappointment and what she believes was the mishandling of her story.
“I go straight back to my childhood foundation that my parents gave me,” she said. “My dad … his faith is in Jesus, not in church. He became a Christian as an adult … So his foundation was really in the Word of God, not in church, and so he gave that same foundation to us, and I just was never taught to believe in man.”
Clemishire continued, “I was taught to believe the Word of God. I was taught to have a personal relationship with Jesus — to pray, and that’s what I’ve done my whole adult life, even in very difficult times.”
Understanding the Guilty Plea
As for Morris’ criminal case and the plea deal, Clemishire said Oklahoma includes victims in the process to ensure they feel OK with the end result.
“There was a lot of conversation around it, a few hours spent together, a couple of different times, processing through all that and understanding all the details behind the plea,” she said. “And then having to come to terms with, ‘This is what’s best for me’ — not what’s best for everyone else watching the story, not what’s best for Robert, but what’s best for me.”
Clemishire said she didn’t want to drag out the process and, in the best interest of her parents and others, decided this was the best course to close the chapter and move forward.
Ultimately, Clemishire said forgiveness is an “ongoing process” and that, over time, she will likely have “new realizations that I need to forgive.”
“Again, 70 times seven,” she said, referencing Jesus’ words about forgiveness. “I think it’s because the wound — something triggers something and we have to forgive again, and that forgiveness is not for him. It is for me. It is not about his life, and if I ever say, ‘I forgive Robert,’ that doesn’t mean I like him, that doesn’t mean I condone what he did, that doesn’t mean that I think he should be a free man roaming the earth without any consequences. It has nothing to do with Robert’s life, and has everything to do with mine and my relationship with God, and my relationship with my friends and family.”
She said holding on to the hurt would only damage her and her family. Clemishire, though, now has a newfound peace after leaving the courtroom last Thursday.
“The only way I can verbalize what happened in that courtroom was, when he walked out in handcuffs and I stood up, I felt like I had been wearing a costume my entire adult life and living out that character,” she said. “And that costume came off of me and stayed on the bench I was sitting on in that courtroom, and I walked out as the woman that God actually created me to be.”
Bill Mateja, an attorney for Morris, said the former preacher wanted to accept responsibility and apologize for his behavior.
“While he believes that he long since accepted responsibility in the eyes of God and that Gateway Church was a manifestation of that acceptance, he readily accepted responsibility in the eyes of the law,” Mateja said, according to ABC News.
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