Gateway Church founder Robert Morris resigns
Gateway Church founder Robert Morris has resigned after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her beginning when she was just 12 years old.
Fox – 4 News
Robert Preston Morris, the Texas megachurch founder who is charged with felony sex crimes against a child, was booked into an Oklahoma jail this week but quickly released.
Morris turned himself in at the Osage County Sheriff’s Office early Monday morning. He was released on a $50,000 bond and ordered to hand over his passport, according to news reports. Morris was indicted last week by an Oklahoma grand jury, which brought five felony counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child.
Morris, 63, resigned as senior pastor of Gateway Church in June after admitting to “inappropriate sexual behavior” in the 1980s. His accuser has said she was 12 when Morris first sexually abused her on Christmas in 1982 during a visit to her home in Hominy, Oklahoma. He was then 21.
Morris had a television program that aired in over 190 countries and his radio program aired in more than 6,800 cities, according to his biography on the Gateway Church website. He was also influential in politics, at one point serving on President Trump’s spiritual advisory board during the 2016 campaign and during Trump’s first term. He did not have a role in the 2024 reelection effort, Trump’s campaign said last year.
Before founding Gateway Church in the Dallas suburbs in 2000, Morris was a traveling evangelist. The alleged crimes took place over a span of several years. It allegedly began on Christmas 1982 after Morris was invited to lead a youth revival in Hominy, which is in Osage County.
He would regularly preach at the church on Sundays and often stayed at the victim’s home. Grand jurors who brought the indictment alleged the offenses started when the girl was 12 and continued while she was 13 and 14 years old.
