Pastor Robert Morris’ lawyer blamed a 12-year-old girl for initiating sexual contact
Letters sent by a lawyer for Gateway Church pastor Robert Morris shed light on how he explained his sexual misconduct with Cindy Clemishire.
In 1982, pastor Robert Morris was a 21-year-old husband and father who traveled the country telling young people about Jesus.
Cindy Clemishire was a 12-year-old girl who dressed in flowery pink pajamas and still liked to play with Barbie dolls.
On Christmas that year, Morris — who would go on to found Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, and become a leading figure in the American evangelical movement — began what he would later describe as “inappropriate sexual behavior” with Clemishire while he was staying at her parents’ home in Oklahoma. Clemishire said Morris told her to come see him in his room before bed, and she was the type of girl who listened to instructions from trusted adults.
But 25 years later, when Clemishire hired an attorney and threatened to sue Morris, accusing him of repeatedly molesting her as a child, a lawyer representing Morris responded by blaming Clemishire for what happened to her, according to 2007 correspondence obtained by NBC News.
“It was your client,” wrote lawyer J. Shelby Sharpe, referring to Clemishire at age 12, “who initiated inappropriate behavior by coming into my client’s bedroom and getting in bed with him, which my client should not have allowed to happen.”
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