Content Note: child sexual abuse
Last month, it came to light that Robert Morris, the founder and pastor of Texas’s Gateway Church and one of Donald Trump’s “spiritual advisors,” had sexually abused Cindy Clemishire when she was 12 years old, while he was staying with her family. To make matters worse, rather than describe the incident as child molestation, as it clearly was, he referred to it as “inappropriate sexual behavior.”
One thing that should not come as any kind of surprise to anyone is that he also had friends who were terrible human beings — including his lawyer, one J. Shelby Sharpe.
As if describing child sexual abuse as “inappropriate sexual behavior,” were not horrific enough, Sharpe somehow managed to make it worse by claiming that it was the 12-year-old girl who started it.
Via NBC:
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.”
I think we can all assume that, if that did happen, it’s highly unlikely that the child did so looking for some action.
As if that were not repulsive enough, Sharpe also had the gall to bring up two other times Clemishire was assaulted by adult men at the ages of 12 and 13 as though that were evidence of some sort of moral failing on her part.
She also “acted inappropriately with two other men who stayed in her home between 1982 and 1987,” Sharpe wrote in his letter.
In an interview, Clemishire disputed Sharpe’s characterizations. She said two other men touched her inappropriately at her home when she was a child, but she said she did not initiate those interactions. In one instance, Clemishire said, it was Morris who instructed her, when she was 13, to go into a bedroom at her childhood home where another traveling evangelist was staying. Once she was inside, she said, the man, whom she declined to name, began to kiss her but eventually pulled away and told her she was too young.
In another instance, in 1986, Clemishire said, another man who was staying with her family climbed on top of her while she was sleeping on a sofa bed next to his 3-year-old daughter. She believed he planned to rape her, but she said the man suddenly got off of her.
Again, that is not a 12-year-old being “inappropriate,” that is a 12-year-old being sexually assaulted by adult men.
When asked about the letter by a reporter, Sharpe denied knowing that the girl was 12 at the time, though the lawyer representing Clemishire explicitly told him that she was 12 in their correspondence.
In addition to defending Morris, Sharpe has also defended Southern Baptist Convention leader Paige Patterson, who was accused of not doing anything to prevent the sexual abuse of children. So he’s got some interesting priorities there.
Speaking of which, here he is talking about how “no-fault divorce” is somehow the cause of school shootings.
Of course, even those who “get it” (“it” being that it is bad to molest children) still have a long way to go. The NBC article I cite here specifies that “Cindy Clemishire was a 12-year-old girl who dressed in flowery pink pajamas and still liked to play with Barbie dolls” — and, you know, I’d really like to take a moment to point out how completely fucking unnecessary every word in that sentence after “Cindy Clemishire was a 12-year-old girl” is. There is no such thing as a 12-year-old who is or ever could be remotely complicit in their own sexual abuse by an adult. It doesn’t matter what they were wearing or what their preferred after-school activities are. Why? Because they’re 12. They are children, regardless of anything else they may do.
That is the same mindset that allows people like Morris, like Sharpe, to justify child sexual abuse by claiming the child was somehow more mature than they actually were — like they did to Cindy Clemishire.
No one is ever asking for it, least of all a child.
PREVIOUSLY:
"I didn't know how old she was."
Here's an idea... keep YOUR FUCKING HANDS TO YOURSELF, and then you won't have to guess.
So it's sexual predator day on Wonkette?
I see no drag queens or trans people involved in these assaults on vulnerable young girls.