He is the founding pastor of the Gateway Megachurch and formerly Donald Trumpadmitted to engaging in “inappropriate sexual conduct with young women” in the 1980s.
The “young woman,” now 54 and a grandmother, was 12 when the abuse began. Morris was in her early 20s, married with children, and her family was staying with Cindy Cremisher, who was 11 at the time. The abuse began one Christmas night.
“When I was in my early 20s, I engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with a young woman in a home where I was staying,” Morris said in a statement to The Christian Post after it contacted him about Klemischer’s allegations. “While it was kissing and fondling – not sexual intercourse – it was wrong, and this conduct occurred on several occasions over the next several years.”
“Obviously, I’m just appalled,” Klemischer told The Christian Post about her portrayal of the woman, who first went public with her accusations on The Wartburg Watch, a blog that catalogues abuse in the church.
“I was 12 years old,” she told The Christian Post. “I was a little girl, a very innocent girl, and he was brought into our home. He and his wife, Debbie, and their little son, Josh, trusted the church that my father had helped start, preached there, and then started to get all of us to do the same. It took me decades as an adult to figure that out.”
Though Morris says they didn’t have sex, “he touched every part of my body and inserted his fingers into me,” Klemischer told The Christian Post. “I was an innocent 12-year-old girl who didn’t know anything about sex.”
In a statement, Morris said he had sought church counseling, repented and had since “walked clean and responsible in this area.”
He founded Gateway in 2000.
Morris served on President Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Committee in 2016 and hosted a campaign roundtable at Gateway and delivered a prayer beforehand. He is not involved in the 2024 campaign, according to CNN.
