Cindy Clemishire, the woman who accused Morris of molesting her at age 12, sat in the courtroom, surrounded by family, as Morris accepted responsibility — a moment she sought for decades.

The plea represents a remarkable fall for Morris, who founded Gateway in 2000 in Southlake, Texas, and grew it into a megachurch with tens of thousands of weekly attendees. His sermons were broadcast to audiences around the world, his books became bestsellers in evangelical circles, and he served as a faith adviser to President Donald Trump.

That career collapsed in June 2024 after Clemishire, 55, publicly accused him of sexually abusing her. Within days, Gateway announced that Morris was stepping down. In a statement at the time, Morris acknowledged what he described as “a moral failure” with a “young lady” decades earlier but didn’t respond to the specifics of the allegation.

Clemishire told NBC News the abuse began on Christmas night in 1982, when she was 12 and wearing flowery pink pajamas. Morris, a traveling evangelist in his early 20s who sometimes stayed with her family in Oklahoma, invited her to his room, where, she said, he instructed her to lie on her back. He then touched her breasts and felt under her panties, she said — the first of several similar encounters that would span the next few years. “Never tell anyone about this,” Clemishire recalled him saying. “It will ruin everything.”

She kept the secret until 1987, when she told her parents and leaders at her church. Morris went through what he later described as a “restoration process” in the late 1980s before he returned to ministry. Nobody called the police, Clemishire said.

Years later, in the mid-2000s — after Morris had risen to national prominence — Clemishire approached him and leaders of Gateway Church, seeking $50,000 in restitution to recover what she’d spent processing her childhood trauma in therapy, records show. In 2007, Morris’ lawyer at the time wrote a letter suggesting Clemishire bore responsibility for the “inappropriate behavior” between her and Morris when she was a child, according to a copy of the message reviewed by NBC News. Morris offered to pay $25,000, but the talks fell apart, Clemishire said, because she wasn’t willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

After decades of roadblocks, a family friend encouraged Clemishire to go public last year. She shared her story with The Wartburg Watch, a blog focused on exposing stories of abuse in churches.

After Morris resigned, the Oklahoma attorney general’s office opened an investigation. In March 2025, a multicounty grand jury indicted him on the five felony counts, charging that he had abused Clemishire from 1982 to 1985. Prosecutors argued that Oklahoma law allowed them to pursue the case despite the passage of decades, pointing to a frontier-era provision that pauses the clock on the statute of limitations when a defendant moves out of state.

At his first court appearance in May, Morris pleaded not guilty and was released on a $50,000 bond. Last month, he waived his preliminary hearing, a signal that his defense team and prosecutors were engaged in plea negotiations. Those talks culminated Thursday with Morris’ guilty plea.

In a prepared statement, Clemishire told Morris in court his abuse “rippled into every part” of her life, straining relationships, damaging her marriages and affecting the way she raised her children. She said she prayed that God helped him to understand the depth of the pain he inflicted.

Morris eyes were fixed on the table in front of him as Clemishire, speaking through tears, faced him during her remarks.

“Let me be clear,” she said. “There is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child. We were never in an ‘inappropriate relationship.’ I was not a ‘young lady’ but a child. You committed a crime against me.”

Clemishire ‘s 82-year-old father silently wept as she spoke. Her sister, Karen Black, also testified, sharing how the abuse shattered every member of their family — grief compounded by decades of watching Morris rise to celebrity.

“You pretended to be holy, preaching from big pulpits,” Black told him in court. “As you hid behind your facade, we’ve known you are nothing but a predator.”

As he was being led away in handcuffs, Morris turned to his wife, Debbie, and their children: “Love y’all,” he said.

The guilty plea is the latest development in a case that has reverberated far beyond rural Oklahoma. In November, Gateway Church announced it had removed four elders after an investigation by an outside law firm concluded some had known about Clemishire’s allegations years ago but failed to act. Earlier this year, Morris sued Gateway seeking millions in retirement benefits, alleging the church mishandled his resignation and damaged his reputation. Gateway has denied Morris’ claims, saying in a statement that his demands “do not reflect accountability for the impact of his actions on the community.” The lawsuit is pending.

The scandal drew national attention as an example of how decades-old allegations of child sex abuse can be prosecuted. Advocates for survivors point to Clemishire’s story as evidence of how victims often wait years to come forward and why civil and criminal statutes of limitation should be eliminated in cases of child sex abuse.

After Clemishire spoke out, she heard from numerous women from across the country who said they, too, had been victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of trusted religious leaders. Her disclosure inspired some to go public with allegations for the first time. In one such example, several women accused their former children’s pastor, Joe Campbell, of molesting them in the 1980s in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri — allegations uncovered in an NBC News investigation and documentary in May. Campbell didn’t respond to requests for comment.