Oklahoma.i start – An Oklahoma woman remembered an itinerant evangelist who preached in her family’s church in Osage County over 40 years ago.
The preacher, along with his wife and son, finally became friends with the woman’s family and stayed at home, he said. It was then that the woman claimed that sexual abuse began, in 1982 when she was only 12 years old.
On Monday, former Texas pastor Megachurch Robert Preston Morris, 63, delivered to the authorities In Osage County after being accused of positions of child sexual abuse.
Here are some things to know about the case:
Cindy Clemishire, Morris’s accuser, told the authorities that Morris’s abuse began at Christmas 1982 when she stayed at her family’s house at age 12 and continued for the next four years.
Associated Press generally does not name the people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they present themselves publicly, as Clemishire has done, now 55 years old.
In a statement last week after the office of the Oklahoma Attorney General announced the charges, she said: “After almost 43 years, the law has finally reached Robert Morris for the horrible crimes he committed against me when I was a child, it is time for the legal system to take responsibility.”
Morris has not returned telephone messages that remain in the numbers associated with him, and his lawyer, Mack Martin, refused to comment on the charges. Martin told The Associated Press that Morris will declare himself innocent.
When asked about last year’s accusations about The Christian position, Morris said in a statement to the publication that when I was just over 20 years old I was “involved in an inappropriate sexual behavior with a young woman in a house where I was staying.”
“It was kisses and caresses and not sexual, but it was wrong,” he said in the statement. “This behavior occurred several times in the coming years.”
Morris was accused last week by the Grand Jury of several Oklahoma counties, a investigation agency that meets in secret and is guided by the office of the Oklahoma Attorney General. The accusation was revealed last week in Osage County.
He has been accused of five positions of lascivious or indecent acts with a child. He faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the five positions.
According to the Office of the Attorney General, Oklahoma’s limitations is not applicable in the case because Morris was not a resident of Oklahoma.
Morris was the former Pastor of Gateway Church, a Megachurna located in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake and founded by Morris in 2000. The church has multiple locations in the area and says that more than 100,000 people attend every weekend.
Morris, who resigned last year After Clemishire appeared with his accusations, it has been politically active. He was among those of the evangelical advisor Board of former President Donald Trump, and the Church received Trump on his Dallas campus in 2020 for a Discussion about racial relationships and the economy.
The Church said in a statement last week that its members are praying for Clemishire and “all those affected by this terrible situation.”
“We are aware of the actions taken by the legal authorities in Oklahoma and we are grateful for the work of the justice system to hold the abusers of their actions,” said the statement.
