Texas megachurch Pastor Robert Morris once asked his sexual assault accuser how much it would cost for her silence, a shocking phone transcript has revealed.
Morris, 62, the founder and senior pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake – one of the largest megachurches in the country – has been accused of sexually abusing former family friend Cindy Clemishire in the 1980s, when she was just 12 years old.
Clemishire, now 54, finally went public with her allegations in a blog post on The Wartburg Watch – a website dedicated to exposing abuse in churches – last week.
But when she had first threatened to expose Morris’ sexual assault back in 2005, the pastor had asked her to ‘put a price on it,’ according to a transcript of a September 22, 2005 phone call obtained by NBC News.
Pastor Robert Morris, 62, once allegedly asked his sexual assault abuser to ‘put a price’ on her silence, a newly-released phone transcript reveals
Cindy Clemishire, now 54, announced last week that Morris had sexually abused her in the 1980s, beginning when she was just 12 years old
Clemishire had reached out to the pastor just two days prior, asking Morris to compensate her for the trauma she endured.
‘Twenty-three years after you began destroying my life, I am still dealing with the pain and damage you caused,’ Clemishire, then 35, wrote in an email to Morris on September 20, 2005.
‘I want some type of restitution,’ she continued. ‘Pray about it and call me.’
The pastor would then call her back two days later, with his wife, Debbie, on the line.
He recounted in the phone call with Clemishire how he left the ministry and sought counseling in 1987, after her father confronted him and church leaders about the assault.
But Clemishire told Morris he should have paid a steeper price for the pain she endured.
‘Two years out of the ministry – big deal,’ she said, according to the phone transcript.
‘I just have a real problem [with] the fact that you have gone untouched by this.’
Morris would later reply, ‘Maybe I wasn’t asked to do enough, but I did everything I was asked to.’
Morris was already married to his wife, Debbie, when the abuse occurred
Later on in the conversation, Clemishire would describe watching interviews of the victims of child molestation and connecting those stories with her own experience.
She said it helped her better understand what she had endured.
‘I just can’t believe how I have justified and made excuses,’ Clemishire said in the phone call.
She then asked Morris to imagine if ‘this kind of thing’ happened to his daughter, who was a teenager at the time.
‘I think you would be horrified. At least I hope you would,’ she reportedly said.
When Morris admitted that he would be horrified, Clemishire pressed him about what he would want to happen if he learned that a pastor in the church committed a crime against a child years earlier.
‘Would you not think they should pay?’ she asked.
‘It may help you to see that person go to prison. But don’t you believe that they should pay for the crime done?’
‘I don’t know [whether] it would be my responsibility for them to pay for the crime done or not,’ Morris replied.
Clemishire reached out to the pastor in 2005, asking him to compensate for the trauma she endured, but she insists she wasn’t blackmailing him for money
Still, Clemshire persisted, saying: ‘I really, honestly feel like it is not fair.
‘It is not fair for every single thing that I have gone through, and still go through, for you to have no [repercussions],’ she said, according to the transcript.
She also told him that if she pressed criminal charges or went public with the story, it ‘would destroy everything that you have.’
‘I just know I want to see you pay something,’ the victim reportedly said.
Morris then told Clemishire it would be wrong for him to pay her to keep her from going public, but the victim insisted she is ‘not trying to blackmail you.’
‘I am not trying to say, “You pay me or this is what I am going to do.”‘
‘Ok,’ Morris replied. ‘Do you want to put an amount on it then?’
At first, Clemishire resisted naming a price figure – saying ‘that is not what this is about.’
But when the pastor continued to press her to name a price, she replied $2 million.
Clemishire now says Morris never actually paid her the money – and insists she never wanted a payout.
She said she had spent years struggling with ‘profound confusion’ about what Morris had done to her, and by 2005, she was finally beginning to understand it was a crime.
‘I was literally sick to my stomach and wanted to finally hold him accountable,’ she told NBC News.
‘The call with Morris had nothing to do with money – it was about my anger and my need to confront him so that he finally knew that I knew what he had done to me.’
Morris left the ministry for two years after Clemishire’s father confronted him in 1987
Clemishire has claimed that Morris’ abuse began when he stayed at her family home in Tulsa on Christmas 1982, when he was already married to his wife, Debbie.
She describes a scene in which Morris asked her to come to his room and speak with him, asking her to lay on his bed.
Morris, Donald Trump’s former spiritual advisor, began to touch her inappropriately, with Clemishire alleging he touched her stomach, then her breast and then under her pants.
‘I remember vividly everything I was wearing and how the pajamas felt. They were light pink, and it was a little top with bloomers, and I had on underwear and bloomers and the little top and a robe that snapped up over the top,’ she said.
Clemishire added that after the alleged abuse occurred, Morris ‘told me I could never tell anyone, because it would ruin everything.’
She said that he would continue to isolate her and abuse her for the next four-and-a- half years before she finally spoke out, first to a family friend and then to her parents.
Clemishire’s father demanded Morris be removed from ministry and she claimed he did for two years in order to undergo ‘restoration.’ He returned to preaching in 1989.
Morris admitted to the sexual abuse last week and resigned from Gateway Church
At the Gateway Church, elders have admitted that they were aware of Morris’ relationship with a ‘young lady’ when he was in his 20s.
But they claim they thought the pastor was just confessing to having an extramarital affair – something Morris would discuss frequently from the pulpit as a moral failure that he overcame with the help of God.
‘The elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’ extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with “a young lady” and not abuse of a 12-year-old child,’ the church leaders said in a statement.
Lawrence Swicegood, a spokesman for the megachurch, also told NBC News that church leaders have not seen the transcript – which was reportedly kept on a shared server with archival sermon notes for years.
‘We take all of this extremely seriously, and abuse of any sort simply cannot be tolerated,’ Swicegood said in a statement.
‘Gateway Church has engaged outside counsel who is conducting an independent and comprehensive inquiry into this entire matter.’
DailyMail.com has also reached out to Morris for comment.
He had resigned from the megachurch last week, after admitting to abusing Clemishire.
Clemishire is now considering bringing a lawsuit against Morris
Clemishire, meanwhile, has hired Boz Tchividjian to represent her in a new potential lawsuit, according to WFAA. Tchividjian is evangelist Billy Graham’s grandson.
‘It seems as if it was preferable for them to simply accept his vague narrative instead of seeking the truth regarding a sexual offense perpetrated upon a minor,’ Tchividjian said.
‘The leaders at Gateway had the responsibility to find out what happened and not to blindly accept his words.’
Morris was never criminally charged and the statute of limitations on such a case has long since ran out.
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