A Dallas judge denied requests from two former Gateway Church elders asking to be dismissed from a defamation lawsuit filed by the woman who was sexually abused by founding pastor Robert Morris.
During a court hearing Friday, Judge Emily Tobolowsky immediately denied the motion after arguments by the attorney for elders Kevin Grove and Steve Dulin and an attorney for Cindy Clemishire.
Clemishire declined to comment after Friday’s hearing.
In June 2024, Clemishire accused Morris of sexually abusing her when she was 12 years old and he was 22 during the 1980s. She said the abuse lasted for more than four years.
Morris pleaded guilty to five counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child in October and was sentenced to 10 years at Osage County Jail in Oklahoma, where the abuse took place. He’s serving six months of that time, will pay out $270,000 to Clemishire and register as a lifetime sex offender.
Gateway parted ways with Dulin a month after the accusations from Clemishire. Grove was one of four elders removed following a four-month internal probe into the Southlake megachurch that revealed they knew about the abuse.
Last June, Clemishire and her father sued Gateway, its elders, Morris, his wife, and his charity group over statements elders made about the abuse, allegedly covering it up for years and financially benefiting from it.
Elders released a statement on June 14, 2024, acknowledging Morris’ sexual abuse. It also said he had been involved in “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a “young lady,” and that her family forgave him.
Clemishire has argued those statements downplayed the assault.
Charles Kibler, attorney for the elders, said during Friday’s hearing Clemishire’s claims in her suit had a lot of “emotional baggage” and had no evidence either elder was involved in the statement released by Gateway elders after she came forward about the abuse.
And, Kibler said there’s no proof the 2024 statement was “untruthful.”
“Was she not a ‘young lady’?” Kibler told Tobolowsky. “Wouldn't we call her young? I'm sure that your honor was called a ‘young lady’ when she was a similar age. I know I was called ‘young man’ when I was in my early days. Is that incorrect? Is that untruthful? It may not have been what the plaintiff wanted to hear. They may want to hear words like rape and statutory rape. But that doesn't make the term ‘inappropriate relationship’ untruthful.”
Kibler, who also declined to comment after the hearing, said what elders did or didn’t know about Morris’ history is “irrelevant.”
Reid Burley, Clemishire’s attorney, argued elders acknowledged it was a false statement and defamatory when they apologized in another statement four days later, saying they “did not have all the facts” about Morris’ abuse, including the victim’s age and the length of the abuse.
Burley said calling Clemishire a young lady when she was 12 was “patently false.”
“No reasonable person would have viewed the statement as anything more than an extramarital affair, not that it was actual rape,” Burley said.
Burley also called it a “plan for emotional distress” when elders met with Morris to make statement.
Tobolowsky has also denied motions by Gateway, Morris, church elders John D. "Tra" Willbanks, Kenneth Fambro, Gayland Lawshe and Dane Minor to be dismissed from the suit.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals also denied a request for a rehearing from Morris and his wife on Wednesday.
A trial is set for June 2026.
Penelope Rivera is KERA's Tarrant County Accountability Reporter. Got a tip? Email Penelope Rivera at privera@kera.org.
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