Disgraced Gateway Church founder Robert Morris was released from the Osage County Jail in Oklahoma on Tuesday morning following the completion of a six-month sentence for sexually abusing Cindy Clemishire for multiple years beginning when she was 12 in the 1980s.
The Osage County Sheriff’s Office reported that Morris, who was also given a 10-year suspended sentence and will have to register as a sex offender, walked out of the jail at 12:11 a.m. CDT.
Morris was indicted in March 2025 on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child by a multi-county grand jury in Oklahoma in connection to his actions against the now 55-year-old Clemishire, who reported that Morris began sexually abusing her on Dec. 25, 1982, when she was 12, and continued with the abuse for four-and-a-half years after that. At the time, Morris was a traveling evangelist.
He pleaded guilty last October to accept responsibility, according to his attorney Bill Mateja.
“He simply accepted responsibility for his crime from the mid-1980’s and pled guilty. He pled guilty because he wanted to accept responsibility for his conduct. 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 by virtue of his guilty plea,” Mateja told The Christian Post in a statement after the Southlake, Texas, church founder was sentenced.
Morris, who was also ordered to pay $270,000 in restitution, still faces an ongoing defamation lawsuit from Clemishire along with Gateway Church.
In her defamation lawsuit, which has been halted pending a mandamus review, Clemishire and her father, Jerry Lee Clemishire, are seeking more than $1 million in damages, alleging that Morris and Gateway Church leaders publicly mischaracterized the abuse she suffered as a consensual “relationship” with a “young lady” instead of the sexual assault of a child after the abuse was made public in 2024.
The petition for mandamus review was filed on Nov. 14 by attorneys for Gateway Church and their independent elders John D. “Tra” Willbanks, Kenneth W. Fambro II and Dane Minor. It came after Dallas County District Court Judge Emily Tobolowsky rejected a motion from the church and elders to dismiss the Clemishires’ lawsuit, citing the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, which holds that courts lack jurisdiction over matters of religion.
On Nov. 11, Tobolowsky also granted the Clemishires’ motion for continuance and limited discovery to oppose motions from Gateway Church and the elders to dismiss her lawsuit under the Texas Citizens Participation Act in open court. The TCPA is a 2011 law that protects citizens from lawsuits intended to stifle their First Amendment rights. Tobolowsky’s discovery order prompted Gateway Church and the independent elders to ask the appeals court, in their writ of mandamus, to stay her Nov. 11 order granting the Clemishires’ motion for a continuance and limited discovery.
Ron Breaux, a partner at Haynes Boone and counsel for Gateway Church, insisted in a statement to The Christian Post after proceedings in the case were stayed that Gateway Church should not be part of the Clemishires’ defamation lawsuit.
“As we’ve stated from the beginning, no one in Gateway’s current leadership had knowledge of its former pastor’s criminal behavior, and they have endeavored to lead the church with integrity and accountability during a difficult times,” he said. “These actions — guided by faith, prayer and a steadfast commitment to the church community — are protected by the First Amendment from secular second-guessing.”
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