Ex-megachurch founder hit with $1M lawsuit claiming sexual abuse and elaborate cover-up scheme
The suit, filed this week in Dallas County District court, accuses Gateway Church founder Robert Morris and others of libel, malice, defamation, slander, failure to report, civil conspiracy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and unjust enrichment.
They are seeking more than $1 million in damages.
High School Teacher Charged With Sexually Assaulting Former Teen Student At Her Home
Cindy Clemishire and her father, Jerry Lee Clemishire, filed the suit less than a year after sharing the allegations with a religious watchdog blog, The Wartburg Watch.
Cindy, 53, claimed she met Morris in 1981 while he was preaching at her church in Oklahoma and their families became close.
Read On The Fox News App
Diddy Accuser Sues Harvey Weinstein For Sexual Assault
She said Morris touched her inappropriately while staying at her house in 1982, and continued for the next four-and-a-half years.
An Oklahoma grand jury in March indicted Morris on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. He is currently out on bond.
In the newly filed suit, Cindy alleges Morris' wife, sons and church members attempted to cover up the abuse for financial gain, according to a report from affiliate FOX 4.
Swiss-born Liberal Megadonor Slapped With Lawsuit For Allegedly Groping, Sexually Harassing Winery Employee
"[The] defendants acted in concert, cooperated with each other and conspired to maximize their profits through their unlawful and unjust course of action to fraudulently conceal and cover up the rape of Plaintiff," according to court documents.
Morris resigned in June 2024 and later filed a lawsuit against the church, stating his "highly inappropriate" relationship with a minor was not a breach of contract, and Gateway Church should fulfill its contractual financial obligations to him.
Church officials said he would have received millions in deferred compensation, additional retirement benefits and a severance payment, according to the report.
Gateway Church declined Fox News Digital's request for comment.Original article source: Ex-megachurch founder hit with $1M lawsuit claiming sexual abuse and elaborate cover-up scheme
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
22 minutes ago
- USA Today
Gabbard yells 'Russia hoax' to distract MAGA from Epstein for Trump. It won't last.
Say what you want about AI, but powerful artificial intelligence in the hands of a 79-year-old man with zero emotional intelligence makes for ugly outcomes. Tulsi Gabbard was on the outs – literally and figuratively – with President Donald Trump last month after contradicting him about Iran's nuclear program, which he was about to bomb. Gabbard, Trump's Director of National Intelligence, was shut out of planning meetings about Iran and pushed to the intelligence sidelines for asserting that Iran had not been trying to build a nuclear weapon. "I don't care what she said," Trump replied when asked about Gabbard back then. She needed a way back inside Trump's bubble. The president's new "Epstein files" scandal offered an opportunity. Trump has stumbled badly with his loyal base and MAGA influencers by demanding that they just move on from a favorite conspiracy theory: that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in 2019 to prevent disclosure of his "client list" of famous, powerful, wealthy people he had blackmailed. Epstein, you must know by now, was a former Trump cruising buddy and convicted pedophile who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges filed during Trump's first term. Trump has long relied on distraction tactics when his supporters get antsy, like a weary parent shaking car keys in a baby's face to stop the crying. But that wasn't working this time. MAGA was in a meltdown. The base was not buying Trump's new pitch: that the Epstein files they so desperately want to see were a Democratic "hoax." So Gabbard dug deep into the classics of Trump's "hoax" claims, declaring on July 18 that President Barack Obama's top advisors had somehow concocted the notion that Russia had attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won while defeating Hillary Clinton. Tulsi Gabbard caters to Trump by suggesting Obama is a criminal Gabbard issued a July 18 memo claiming to have new evidence of an "Obama Administration conspiracy to subvert" Trump's 2016 win. She pushed it in a post on X, announcing that she was sending information to the Department of Justice for "criminal referral." And she played it up for the weekend morning anchors at Fox News, because, of course. Trump grabbed all that like a drowning man grabs a life preserver. He spent the weekend frenzy-posting on his website, Truth Social, promoting Gabbard's Fox News hit, posting memes of Obama and other prominent Democrats in a jail cell and in prison uniforms. The president of the United States of America even shared a video made with artificial intelligence of Obama being handcuffed in the Oval Office. Say what you want about AI, but powerful artificial intelligence in the hands of a 79-year-old man with zero emotional intelligence makes for ugly outcomes. 'Stupid Republicans': Trump mocks GOP allies for seeking Epstein files release | Opinion Trump and Gabbard won't let facts get in the way of their fresh lies The lit sparkler Gabbard passed off as a bombshell focuses on the discussion within the intelligence community at the end of Obama's second term about whether Russia had used cyberattacks on election infrastructure. She's claiming Obama's team "manufactured" intelligence to hobble Trump's impending presidency after he won. There's a hole in that theory. First, the Obama administration said shortly after the 2016 presidential election that hackers had not tampered with the election results. Marc Elias, who then was general counsel for the Clinton campaign, wrote at the time that they had "not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking" in the election. Opinion: Trump is unpopular, polls show, and he's building an America most Americans hate Trump's tantrums about this have never been focused just on cyberattacks or hacking. He has long insisted that any claim that "Russia, Russia, Russia" wanted him to win in 2016 was a "hoax." Here's another problem with that. The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in an August 2020 report issued as Trump was running for re-election, said it "found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling" in the election, including "an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome." Those words came from the archived statement by Marco Rubio, who at the time was a Republican senator from Florida and acting chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and now serves as Trump's secretary of State. He and Gabbard are, in theory, on the same team. You know who else is on that team? CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who earlier this month released a review of his agency's 2016 assessment that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 election. That review offered some criticism for how the assessment was reached, but didn't challenge its veracity. Gabbard is hoping that Americans will be distracted U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, put out that 966-page 2020 report about Russia with Rubio and still holds that post today. The report's title: "Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 Election." Warner, in a July 18 statement, said, "It seems DNI Gabbard is unaware" that the committee found that Russia "used social media to conduct an information warfare campaign in order to benefit Donald Trump." He also noted, "This conclusion was supported on a unanimous basis by every single Democrat and Republican on the committee." Gabbard is dredging back up Russian interference because American voters just don't buy what Trump has tried to sell them about the Epstein files that his administration is still keeping secret, after he promised during last year's campaign to make them public. She appears to have won back his favor, for now. But this distraction is just so shaky, like those keys dangled in a baby's face, that it won't hold America's gaze for long. Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
Fox News
3 hours ago
- Fox News
The Biden Coup
Hunter Biden comes out of hiding to air his party's dirtiest laundry and unmask the crooked machine that couped his dad — and it's the democrats' worst nightmare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit FOX News Radio
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Laura Loomer Attacks ‘Fox News Barbie' Pam Bondi Over Epstein List
Far-right activist Laura Loomer says Pam Bondi would rather be the next 'Fox News Barbie' than succeed as attorney general. Loomer is one of several MAGA and Republican figures who feel duped after the FBI and Bondi's Department of Justice announced there's no evidence of a so-called 'client list' featuring high-profile names linked to late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, nor that Epstein had 'blackmailed prominent individuals' with such dirt. Loomer has taken particular aim at Bondi because the attorney general told Fox News in February that not only does the Epstein list exist, but that it was 'sitting on my desk right now' for review. Loomer has since called on Bondi to resign, or for President Donald Trump to fire her, for allegedly misleading the public about the list's existence or failing to disclose it. Speaking on New York's morning radio show Sid & Friends in the Morning, hosted by Sid Rosenberg, Loomer repeated her calls for Bondi to lose her job over the Epstein bait-and-switch, adding that Bondi shouldn't have been appointed to the top role in the first place. 'Talk about an absolute fumble. She had one job, and upon being nominated as attorney general by President Trump, she talked a big talk, went on Fox News,' Loomer said. 'I mean, honestly, it seems like she spends more time on Fox News auditioning to be another Fox News Barbie than she does actually doing her job as attorney general.' In a memo, the FBI and DOJ also dismissed the conspiracy theory that Epstein didn't take his own life and was instead murdered inside his cell at New York City's Metropolitan Correctional Center in August 2019. The debunked claim was previously pushed by top Trump loyalists Kash Patel and podcaster Dan Bongino, who are now leading the FBI as director and deputy director, respectively. Loomer questioned whether Trump made the right decisions in elevating certain MAGA figures to top Cabinet roles and other positions in the wake of the Epstein fallout. 'Was it the best decision to put people in these positions because they had a popular podcast, or because they look good on TV, or because they're on Fox News a lot?' Loomer asked. 'We kind of have a reality TV cabinet. I don't think that Pam Bondi is qualified to be the attorney general. She's kind of a bimbo.' Loomer also rejected the suggestion that Bondi said there's no Epstein client list because Trump—a one time friend of the billionaire financier—is actually named in it. She argued that if that were the case, Democrats such as former President Joe Biden would have 'exploited that information and released it' ahead of the 2020 or 2024 elections. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Bondi after the attorney general initially appeared to claim the Epstein client list was on her desk, before later stating it does not exist in the DOJ memo. 'She was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes,' Leavitt told reporters Monday. 'That's what the attorney general was referring to.' The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
