Church Mutual Insurance Company, America’s leading insurer of religious organizations, has asked a Texas court to issue a declaratory judgment that it has no duty to defend or indemnify Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, its founder, Robert Morris, and its independent elders against a $1 million defamation lawsuit filed by child-sex abuse survivor Cindy Clemishire.
The company filed the request in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas last month, arguing that it has disclaimed coverage for the church, Morris and other named defendants under Gateway’s primary insurance policies because Cindy Clemishire’s childhood sexual abuse by Morris first occurred in 1982.
Lawyers for the religious insurance giant argue that because it has only been covering Gateway through commercial general liability and umbrella insurance policies since December 2023, the injuries stemming from Clemishire’s abuse in the 1980s are excluded from coverage.
“… [T]he Clemishires allege that Mr. Morris’s sexual assault and rape of Ms. Clemishire first occurred in December 1982, which was many years prior to inception of the first policy issued by Church Mutual to Gateway Church. Accordingly, no coverage is available under the Sexual Misconduct Coverage Form,” Church Mutual argues in its filing.
Morris was given a six-month prison term and a 10-year suspended sentence during a hearing in Osage County Court, Oklahoma, on Oct. 2, after he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing Clemishire, 55, for 4.5 years in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12. At the time, Morris, who founded Gateway Church in 2000, was serving as a traveling evangelist.
Clemishire and her father, Jerry Lee Clemishire, are not focused on the actions of the defendants from the 1980s. They are seeking more than $1 million in damages, alleging that Morris and Gateway Church leaders publicly mischaracterized the abuse she suffered as a consensual “relationship” with a “young lady” instead of the sexual assault of a child after the abuse was made public in 2024.
“On June 14, 2024, Robert Morris made a public statement to The Christian Post wherein he falsely minimized his rape of me, referring to it only as ‘inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady,'” Clemishire writes in a Nov. 6 affidavit.
“Shortly thereafter in June of 2024, the Elders of Gateway Church issued their own statement to Gateway staff wherein they asserted that ‘Pastor Robert has been open and forthright about a moral failure he had over 35 years ago when he was in his twenties’ and republished Robert Morris’s statement that he made to The Christian Post,” she continues.
“These statements were false and misleading because they minimized Robert Morris’s rape of me, a 12-year-old child, as something that was only ‘inappropriate’ rather than criminal and implied the sex acts were consensual by classifying me as a ‘young lady.'”
As a result of the June 2024 statements, Clemishire says she has been “harassed by Gateway’s followers and members of the public, resulting in significant anxiety, grief, and mental anguish.”
Church Mutual Insurance Company is seeking a declaratory judgment against Gateway’s board of elders, the Robert Morris Evangelistic Association Inc., and media executive Lawrence Swicegood, along with Gateway Church, Morris and his wife, Deborah, and Clemishire and her father.
The lawsuit also names current and former elders of the church as individual defendants. They are: Thomas H. Miller, Jr., John D. “Tra” Willbanks III, Kevin Grove, Jeremy Carrasco, Kenneth W. Fambro II, Gayland Lawshe, Dane Minor and Steve Dulin.
“Plaintiff Church Mutual Insurance Company prays that Defendants be cited to appear herein and that upon final trial hereof, Plaintiff has judgment against Defendants declaring that Plaintiff has no duty to defend or indemnify the Underlying Defendants with respect to the claims asserted in the Underlying Lawsuit,” the insurance company states. “Church Mutual also prays for the recovery of all other relief the Court deems appropriate.”
Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost
