More details have emerged regarding the sex abuse committed by Robert Morris on a 12 year old girl beginning in 1982. Robert Morris would go on to pastor Gateway Church, the largest megachurch in the United States. According to Morris, he stepped back into ministry with the blessing of Cindy Clemishire’s father who failed to report him to the police. Clemishire then alleges that Robert Morris offered her only $25000 to sign an NDA around 2005. More details have emerged from this negotiation including the remarks of Robert Morris’s lawyer who appears to blame a child for being molested.
“It was your client,” wrote lawyer J. Shelby Sharpe, referring to Clemishire at age 12, “who initiated inappropriate behavior by coming into my client’s bedroom and getting in bed with him, which my client should not have allowed to happen.”
The Feb. 6, 2007, letter was one in a series of exchanges that year between Sharpe and Gentner Drummond, a lawyer who represented Clemishire at the time. Clemishire said in an interview last week she had been seeking $50,000 in restitution from Morris to cover the cost of counseling. Morris, through his lawyer, instead offered to pay $25,000, but the talks fell apart, Clemishire said, because she was not willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Drummond, who is now Oklahoma’s attorney general, confirmed Clemishire’s description of the 2007 negotiations and declined to comment further.
J Shelby Sharpe denies knowing that Cindy CLimishire was a child at the time.
Reached by phone Monday, Sharpe said that he had no recollection of the $25,000 settlement offer or NDA demand and that he no longer represents Morris. He denied knowing at the time that Clemishire had been a child when Morris began engaging in sexual behavior with her. However, the initial correspondence Drummond sent to him stated clearly that Clemishire was “twelve years old” when the abuse began.
“I don’t ever remember seeing that,” Sharpe said after a reporter read the document to him. After a reporter offered to share a copy of the messages, Sharpe said he did not have time to read them and declined to share an email address.
Sharpe should have known Morris molested a child and most likely did as his alibi is not believable. This is the latest instance uncovered of people “not knowing” Robert Morris molested a child. The elders of Gateway Church claimed to “not know” even though Morris’s explanation which they had in a leaked internal memo gave several key indicators of the victim being a child. Likewise, it would be odd for a lawyer to make such counterarguments about “who initiated” before gathering the facts. What is clear, also, is that Robert Morris made a concerted effort to not tell people he molested a child even when referencing this situation.
