A lawsuit filed against Gateway Church in 2020 alleging that church leadership did not properly report a sexual assault of a minor at a sleepover for members of the church’s youth groupwas settled out of court earlier this year, Tarrant County court records show.
The lawsuit, initially filed in August 2020 by a former Gateway church member and volunteer, said their daughter was sexually assaulted in March 2018 at the sleepover held at the home of two Gateway volunteers.
The suit alleges the 11-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by the minor son of the two volunteers, and Gateway Church leaders did not report the assault when they learned of it and attempted to “conceal, misconstrue and discredit” the allegations during a criminal investigation.
A spokesperson for Gateway denied this, and said the church reported the assault to authorities when a staff member learned of the alleged abuse.
Gateway filed a no-evidence motion and requested summary judgment in 2022. In the motion, Gateway said that while the parents were Gateway volunteers, the sleepover was not sponsored or planned by the church, and Gateway did not even know about the sleepover until over a month later, when the mother reported the assault to one of the defendants.
The motion also says Gateway’s “ecclesiastical doctrines” do not permit volunteers to act as representatives of the church. Gateway also argued the mother had not shown adequate evidence to support her claims.
Court records show four attorneys and their firms representing the mother withdrew over the course of the case, which was set for trial in February 2023.
In a summary judgment in January 2023, the case was ruled in favor of Gateway prior to trial, before the mother appealed the ruling and the case was sent to mediation, court records show. A mutual agreement in the lawsuit was reached in January of this year before the case was settled out of court in April.
A separate lawsuit filed in March 2019 by the mother against the parents who hosted the sleepover was dismissed without prejudice, leaving open the option for future action.
Attorneys for Gateway did not respond to email and phone messages seeking comment. Lindsey Rames, the mother’s current attorney, said the terms of the settlement were confidential and declined further comment.
Gateway spokesperson Lawrence Swicegood said in an email statement that the incident was not affiliated with Gateway, and was settled to avoid future litigation. He also deniedthe assertion that Gateway did not report the assault.
“This non-Gateway related case — that was properly reported by an adult — was turned over to Gateway’s insurance company and its attorneys,” Swicegood said, “and the insurance company decided to provide a settlement to avoid further litigation and expense.”
Sion Alford, the campus pastor for Gateway’s Justin campus and one of the defendants named in the lawsuit, said in an email the assault was reported to CPS within 48 hours of Gateway staff learning of it.
“We followed the law and appropriately reported the suspected abuse,” Alford said, adding that the settlement did not indicate “inaction or guilt” on the church’s part.
CPS was unable to confirm who reported the suspected abuse when contacted by The Dallas Morning News. Haltom City police were not able to find a police report based on information submitted by The News.
The settlement came only a few months before decades-old allegations surfaced against Gateway’s founder and former senior pastor Robert Morris that resulted in his resignation in June. Cindy Clemishire, a 54-year-old Oklahoma woman, came forward to report that Morris, a former family friend, sexually abused her for four years, beginning when she was 12 in 1982.
According to court documents, the parents who hosted the sleepover held church-sponsored events at their home, including Bible studies.
The documents said the mother was informed the sleepover would be only girls who were members of Gateway’s youth ministry.
While at the sleepover, the volunteers’ minor son entered a room where the girls were socializing and was told to leave, according to the documents. He later came back and left again, prompting the girls to lock the door to keep him out, documents said.
He later sneaked back into the room and attempted to touch one of the girls inappropriately several times, the documents said. After the girls fell asleep, the suit alleges he groped the girl as she slept, causing her to wake up.
The documents do not say how old the minor son was at the time of the alleged assault. He is not identified in the lawsuit.
According to the documents, the girl told a Gateway youth worker about the assault, and it later became known to Gateway staff.
The lawsuit alleges the Gateway staff did not report the assault to law enforcement, child protective agencies or the girl’s mother, but did tell the boy’s parents.
Swicegood denied this allegation in a statement. He said a minor involved in the incident told another minor about the incident roughly a month after it happened, who then told their mother, who promptly reported the assault to authorities.
“A month after the incident took place, the minor who was involved in this incident at this private residence sleepover was attending an unrelated Gateway event,” Swicegood said. “At that event, the minor told a fellow teenage minor of the alleged incident. The mother of the teen — to whom the alleged incident was told — was a Gateway staff member. When she found out about the accusation, that mother and other Gateway staff did, in fact, report it to proper authorities within 48 hours.”
According to the documents, the youth who learned of the assault was a 17-year-old Gateway volunteer, and their mother was a department coordinator at the church. The Gateway staff named in the lawsuit include several members of administrative staff and several pastors, including a campus pastor.
The documents said the girl’s mother later learned of the assault from her daughter and filed a report with the Haltom City Police Department, which began an investigation. The documents did not say the result of the investigation.
The suit also alleges Gateway staff interfered with the police investigation, but does not say how.
“The criminal investigation was tainted by the pastor’s influence and assistance rendered to perpetrator in shaping the narrative and testimony provided to the investigating authorities,” the suit said. “Due to the weeks of active concealment by Defendants, significant evidence of the alleged criminal assault was allowed to waste and degrade, further hindering law enforcement’s ability to accurately investigate the original assault.”
According to the documents, the Gateway staff members named in the suit encouraged other members of the church to ostracize the girl’s mother and removed her from her volunteer duties. The suit also said the girl experienced severe trauma and depression from the assault and required counseling.
The suit also said the boy had been known to make inappropriate comments and gestures to other girls in church, which should have been known to church leaders.
Gateway did not respond to questions about the church’s policies regarding reporting sexual assault or if trainings were required of staff and volunteers before interacting with children.
In a document filed in response, lawyers for Gateway said the church had no authority or control over off-campus events, and denied all claims made in the initial lawsuit.
