US megachurch pastor released from jail after pleading guilty to child sex abuse

The founder and former pastor of one of the US’s largest megachurches has been released from an Oklahoma jail six months after pleading guilty to sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.Robert Morris, 64, who started Texas’s Gateway Church and also once served as a White House spiritual adviser during Donald Trump’s first presidency, pleaded guilty in early October in Osage County district court on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child.Under a plea agreement, Morris only had to serve six months in the Osage County jail, with the rest of his 10-year sentence suspended. He was also required to register as a sex offender and pay $270,000 in restitution.Morris was released from custody early on Tuesday, having completed his sentence, according to jail records and local reports. CBS News reported that he will remain under supervision, with nine and a half years of probation.Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, grew into one of the largest megachurches in the US after Morris founded and led it.Cindy Clemishire, the woman who publicly identified herself as the victim of Morris’s sexual abuse, told the Dallas Morning News in 2024 that the abuse began in 1982 when she was 12 years old and Morris was 21. At the time, he working as a traveling preacher, and her family let him stay at their home in Oklahoma.Clemishire was present in the courtroom when Morris pleaded guilty in the fall. In a prepared statement at the time, she said: “There is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child. We were never in an ‘inappropriate relationship.’ I was not a ‘young lady’ but a child. You committed a crime against me.”Morris resigned as senior pastor of Gateway Church in 2024 after Clemishire went public. He was indicted in March 2025 on the counts to which he later pleaded guilty.During Trump’s first term in the Oval Office, Morris served on an evangelical advisory board. Trump also attended a roundtable at Gateway Church in June 2020.