Trump Spiritual Advisor Quite Blasé About His Past Child Molestation Habit
Robert Morris seems to be overlooking the whole 'She was 12' of it all.
Content Note: child sexual abuse
Robert Morris is the founder and pastor of Texas’s Gateway Church and one of Trump’s “spiritual advisors.” He’s also a fucking creep who describes sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl as “inappropriate sexual behavior.”
Morris met Cindy Clemishire in 1982, when she was 12 years old and he was 20. He was married and starting his ministry, she was … in the seventh grade. On Friday, Clemishire told The Wartburg Watch that it started when he stayed with her family one Christmas and invited her to come to his bedroom.
Via The Wartburg Watch:
Cindy sat in the back seat of the car with Robert. He asked her to visit him in his room that night. She shared a room with her sister. Cindy, an innocent twelve-year-old girl, movingly described what she was wearing. She was wearing pink pajamas with bloomer pants. She wore underwear underneath. She had a snap-up robe on. […]
She thought nothing of visiting a family friend in their bedroom. He told her to lie down on her back and touched her stomach. He told her to close her eyes. Then he touched her breasts and felt under her panties. He warned her: Never tell anyone about this because it will ruin everything.
She returned to her bedroom and didn’t tell her sister what happened.
The abuse continued for four years, up until he tried to have actual sexual intercourse with her in his car when she was 16. It was at that point that she confided in a friend who told her to tell her parents. She did, and her father called up the church and demanded he step down from ministry, which he reportedly did for two whole years.
In an impressive feat of victim blaming, Morris’s wife, Debbie, called Cindy — the child her husband had been abusing for the last four years — and told her that she “forgave” her.
Morris responded to Clemishire coming forward by describing his abuse of a 12-year-old child as he would a consensual affair with an adult.
“When I was in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying. It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong. This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years,” Morris said in a statement to The Christian Post after Gateway Church was asked about the allegations.
“In March of 1987, this situation was brought to light, and it was confessed and repented of. I submitted myself to the Elders of Shady Grove Church and the young lady’s father. They asked me to step out of ministry and receive counseling and freedom ministry, which I did. Since that time, I have walked in purity and accountability in this area,” Morris added.
Child molestation is “inappropriate sexual behavior” in the same way that bludgeoning someone to death with a hammer for cutting in line is “overreacting.” Morris talks about this as though he were in a consensual relationship with another young adult instead of sexually abusing a child.
Indeed, when Clemishire retained a civil attorney in 2005 to sue Morris for the cost of her therapy bills, an attorney representing him claimed that it was her fault because she was “flirtatious.” At 12.
“I'm, of course, just appalled,” Clemishire told CP on Saturday about his description of her as a “young lady.”
“I was 12 years old. I was a little girl. A very innocent little girl. And he was brought into our home. He and his wife, Debbie, and their little boy, Josh, and trusted and preached at the church that my dad helped start and then began grooming all of us to do this, which took me decades to wrap my brain around as an adult,” she said.
“It went on for many years. He says there was no sexual intercourse, but he did touch every part of my body and inserted his fingers into me, which I understand now is considered a form of rape by instrumentation. I was an innocent 12-year-old little girl who knew nothing about sexual behavior.”
It doesn’t matter if there was intercourse or not. It also, frankly, shouldn’t matter if she knew about sex or not. An adult person inappropriately touching a 12-year-old girl is not “petting,” it is child sexual abuse. There is nothing a 12-year-old child can do or know to make it anything else.
In fact, one of the reasons it is so important to teach age appropriate sex-ed to kids is so that, should something like this happen to them, they know it’s not okay, they know it’s not their fault, and they know they can tell someone about it. That level of innocence is something that can, unfortunately, be taken advantage of by men like Robert Morris.
Cindy Clemishire is and has been concerned about the fact that Morris continues to be in a position of power at his church, because she believes she is not the only young girl he did this to. She probably isn’t. Both he and the church claim that he has “walked in purity” since then, which isn’t really the kind of thing one can confirm one way or another.
One thing we can tell you about Robert Morris though — he sure as hell ain’t a drag queen.
UPDATE: Robert Morris has been kicked out of his church, with elders claiming they didn’t know the “young lady” he spoke about was a 12-year-old child he was sexually abusing.
PREVIOUSLY:
I was on a jury 3 years ago that heard a case against a 35 year old man who did that same type of molestation to his 11 year old niece.
That guy is now serving a life sentence at the State prison in Florence, Arizona.
>>In an impressive feat of victim blaming, Morris’s wife, Debbie, called Cindy — the child her husband had been abusing for the last four years — and told her that she “forgave” her.<<
I sincerely hope Debbie believes in hell, because there's a 1000% chance she's going there on the fucking express elevator.