Robert Preston Morris, a former Texas megachurch pastor and an ally of President Donald Trump, was indicted in Oklahoma this week on child sex abuse charges dating to the 1980s, when he was a traveling evangelist preacher.

Morris, who founded the Dallas-area Gateway Church in 2000, resigned last year after Cindy Clemishire publicly accused him of sexual abuse over the course of nearly five years, beginning when she was 12.

On Wednesday, a multicounty Oklahoma grand jury indicted the 63-year-old former senior pastor on five felony counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child.

“There can be no tolerance for those who sexually prey on children,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement Wednesday. “This case is all the more despicable because the alleged perpetrator was a pastor who exploited his position. The victim in this case has waited far too many years for justice to be done.”

Here’s what you need to know about the case.

Morris is the founding pastor of Gateway Church.

Gateway Church held its inaugural service on April 23, 2000 — Easter Sunday — for 180 people at the Hilton Hotel in Grapevine, Texas, according to an archived version of the church’s website. In 2003, the congregation moved to Southlake, Texas.

Gateway, which began with 30 members gathering in Morris’s home, is among the largest churches in the United States, with nine Dallas-area campuses and more than 100,000 parishioners, according to the archived webpage.

Morris was also chancellor of the King’s University, a Dallas-area evangelical university.

Morris resigned from his posts at Gateway Church and the King’s University in 2024, just days after Clemishire came forward with accusations of childhood sexual abuse.

The indictment alleges that Morris began abusing Clemishire in December 1982, when he was a traveling preacher who was staying at the Clemishire family’s home in Hominy, Oklahoma.

Clemishire, whose allegations first appeared on the religious blog Wartburg Watch in June, said Morris, then 21, invited her to his room on Christmas night in 1982. After asking her to lie down, Clemishire told the blog, Morris touched her inappropriately and warned her against reporting the incident. She was 12 at the time.

She said the abuse continued for 4½ years, in Oklahoma and Texas. Clemishire told the Dallas Morning News in October that it took her years to realize that what happened to her was a crime.

On Wednesday, Oklahoma announced that a grand jury had indicted Morris on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. Each charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

“After almost 43 years, the law has finally caught up with Robert Morris for the horrific crimes he committed against me as a child,” Clemishire said in a statement Wednesday through her attorney, Boz Tchividjian. “Now, it is time for the legal system to hold him accountable.”

“My family and I are deeply grateful to the authorities who have worked tirelessly to make this day possible and remain hopeful that justice will ultimately prevail,” Clemishire, now 55, added.

Morris’s attorney, Mack Martin, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement shared with The Washington Post, Gateway Church said it was “grateful for the work of the justice system in holding abusers accountable for their actions.”

The statute of limitations does not apply to this case, Drummond’s office said. This is because Morris was a guest in the state and not a resident or inhabitant of Oklahoma at any time.

Morris was named to Trump’s spiritual advisory group in 2016. At the time, his campaign called the formation of the group a representation of Trump’s “endorsement of those diverse issues important to Evangelicals and other Christians, and his desire to have access to the wise counsel of such leaders as needed.”

Trump visited Gateway’s Dallas campus in June 2020 to lead a roundtable on economic, health and justice disparities. During the event, he called Morris and another church leader “great people with a great reputation.”

Morris also attended the September 2020 Rose Garden ceremony commemorating Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The gathering, which was held at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, was later deemed a superspreader event. Several attendees tested positive for the virus. After returning from Washington, Morris preached without wearing a mask; Gateway later reported an outbreak among church staff, Dallas Morning News reported at the time.