The founder of a Texas megachurch allegedly sexually abused a 12-year-old girl and several people knew about it but did not intervene, a private investigation determined.

Gateway Church in Southlake, near Fort Worth, conducted an investigation involving authorities into allegations that founder Robert Morris had a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s. The investigation claims the relationship did occur and that others were aware, but did not ask additional questions.

Four church elders, Kevin Grove, Thomas Miller, Jeremy Carrasco and Gayland Lawshe, were removed after the investigation was concluded.

“We must be honest with ourselves and recognize that our culture allowed this truth to remain buried for too long,” Tra Willbanks, another Gateway Church elder, said during a worship service Saturday.

Willbanks also called it a “massive failure of governance and accountability.”

“When a church focuses on one pastor, it loses its way,” Willbanks said. “And unfortunately, over the past few months we have realized that at some point in the past, the culture at Gateway became a culture where power was centralized and the leader at the top was surrounded by people who wanted to protect him, some of them at all costs.”

Morris allegedly abused the boy between 1982 and 1987, when he was a traveling evangelist in his early 20s.

Cindy Clemshire accused the pastor of repeatedly sexually abusing her during that time.

“There was a group that knew without a doubt that Cindy was 12 when the abuse began, and there was a second group that knew about the allegations of sexual abuse by Robert Morris, who had enough information that it should have led them to do more. questions and ask more, but they didn’t,” Willbanks said.

Clemshire said CBS News Texas that Morris and his wife were friends of his parents and often stayed at their house.

“He said, ‘You can never tell anyone because it will ruin everything,'” Clemshire told the reporter.

Robert Morris resigned as director of Gateway Church in June. Morris’s son, James Morris, and his wife, Bridget, also resigned from their leadership positions at the church last summer.

Gateway Church was founded in 2000 and is now one of the largest congregations in the country, with more than 25,000 in attendance. Its main campus spans 64 acres.

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