<\/p>\n
Disgraced Texas megachurch pastor Robert Morris has been released from an Oklahoma prison after serving only 6 months of a 10-year sentence for sexually abusing a 12-year-old\u00a0girl named Cindy Clemishire in Oklahoma\u00a0in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Osage County officials say 64-year-old Robert Preston Morris was released from prison early Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under his plea agreement, he received a 10-year suspended sentence and must register as a sex offender while being supervised by Texas authorities through an interstate compact. He was also ordered to pay his incarceration costs and restitution to the victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Morris started abusing Clemishire in 1982 when she was just 12. At the time, Morris was a traveling evangelist staying with her family in Hominy, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
Morris went on to become the senior pastor of Gateway Church in a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, leading one of the nation\u2019s largest megachurches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clemishire had tried to tell her story many years before but had been largely ignored. She told CBN News it also took years for her to fully grasp what she endured. “I was 12,” she said. “I was not a teenager yet. And I told (adults what happened) when I was 17,\u00a0and it did go all the way through…the full year of being 16.”<\/p>\n
In 2025, Morris had initially pleaded “not guilty” to five charges of lewd or indecent acts with a child.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At that time, Clemishire testified before Texas lawmakers in the state Capitol, “It wasn’t until, even with years of counseling, that I could accept the term ‘abuse.’ I was 35 the first time I truly accepted and believed that (Morris) abused me and it was criminal.”<\/p>\n
CBN News Coverage:<\/strong><\/p>\n Morris resigned from his church leadership role\u00a0in June 2024 when the victim’s allegations gained traction.\u00a0He was indicted in 2025 by an Oklahoma grand jury.\u00a0He eventually pleaded guilty to 5 counts of sexually abusing Clemishire when she was a girl.<\/p>\n The victim, who is now in her 50s, said in a statement when Morris was sentenced that \u201cjustice 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Even though Morris is out of prison, Jeff Leach, a Dallas-based attorney who represents Clemishire, said they are \u201cheartened to know that he (Morris) still has nearly ten years of probation as well as a lifetime ahead of being publicly registered as a sex offender.\u201d<\/p>\n Leach added that Clemishire plans to continue to seek justice through civil courts. \u201cShe rightfully seeks full accountability not only for Robert and the crimes he committed against her as a young child, but also for the other individuals who harbored him, covered for him, lied for him and even in some cases attacked Cindy on his behalf,\u201d Leach said.<\/p>\n In a statement released on Tuesday by one of Morris’ attorneys, Bill Mateja, Morris apologized to Clemishire and her family, praising them for coming forward.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I did to Cindy decades ago was wrong. There is no other word for it, and there is no excuse for it. I am deeply sorry,\u201d Morris said. “I have carried the weight of that wrong for a very long time, and I am grateful – genuinely grateful – that the Clemishires had the courage to bring this into the light.”<\/p>\n \u201cMany years ago, I sought their forgiveness privately, and as Cindy\u2019s father recently noted, he extended that grace to me – a grace I did not deserve and have never taken for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2025, Clemishire said\u00a0Morris caused severe damage to her life that she’s still working through. She said, \u201cIn 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…” She points out that during courtroom proceedings, Morris had the opportunity to openly, directly\u00a0apologize to her, but did not do so.<\/p>\n At that time, referring to Jesus’\u00a0words about forgiveness, she said,\u00a0\u201cAgain, 70 times seven…\u00a0I think it\u2019s because the wound \u2014 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, \u2018I forgive Robert,\u2019 that doesn\u2019t mean I like him, that doesn\u2019t mean I condone what he did, that doesn\u2019t mean that I think he should be a free man roaming the earth without any consequences. It has nothing to do with Robert\u2019s life, and has everything to do with mine and my relationship with God, and my relationship with my friends and family.\u201d<\/p>\n ***Please sign up for\u00a0CBN Newsletters\u00a0and download the\u00a0CBN News app\u00a0to receive\u00a0the latest news from a Christian perspective.***<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Disgraced Texas megachurch pastor Robert Morris has been released from an Oklahoma prison after serving only 6 months of a 10-year sentence for sexually abusing a 12-year-old\u00a0girl named Cindy Clemishire in Oklahoma\u00a0in the 1980s. Osage County officials say 64-year-old Robert Preston Morris was released from prison early Tuesday.\u00a0 Under his plea agreement, he received a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1959,2041,3694,3079,1036,8264,618,7149,224,2889],"class_list":["post-24823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-10year","tag-abuse","tag-child","tag-jail","tag-months","tag-morris","tag-robert","tag-sentence","tag-sex","tag-walks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}