Robert Morris, the founder of one of the US’s largest megachurches and a former spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, has been released from an Oklahoma jail after serving six months for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.
Morris, 64, pleaded guilty in October to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. Under a plea agreement, he received a 10-year suspended sentence with six months served, and was ordered to register as a sex offender and pay $270,000 in restitution. He was freed on Tuesday, with nine and a half years of probation.
The abuse began in 1982 when Morris was 21 and working as a travelling preacher. The victim, Cindy Clemishire, was 12 at the time. She said in a statement: “There is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child. You committed a crime against me.”
Morris resigned as senior pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, after Clemishire went public in 2024. He had served on an evangelical advisory board during Trump’s first term, and Trump attended a roundtable at the church in June 2020.
