A nondisclosure agreement could have kept Cindy Clemishire from speaking out against former North Texas pastor Robert Morris.
Cindy Clemishire was 12 years old when a traveling evangelist began to sexually abuse her in the 1980s. He made her promise not to tell anyone about it.
“The first time he made the premeditated decision to violate and defile my purity, he told me … 'You can never tell anyone, because it will ruin everything,’” Clemishire recounted to a Texas House panel Wednesday morning as the lawmakers heard testimony for a bill proposing to ban nondisclosure agreements in sex abuse cases.
Robert Morris, a former spiritual adviser to President Donald Trump who in North Texas founded one of the largest and most influential megachurches in the U.S., was 20 years old in 1982, when Clemishire alleges the abuse began while he stayed at her family's home in Oklahoma.
Eighteen years ago, Morris again tried to silence Clemishire, she said. During negotiations over a civil settlement in 2007, Morris’ attorney offered Clemishire $25,000 in exchange for signing a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting her from speaking out about the abuse that allegedly took place over five years. She refused.
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“My abuser is finally being held accountable for the horrific crimes he committed against me as a child because I refused to sign the NDA,” Clemishire said.
But Trey Carlock, who was 28 when he died by suicide in 2019, did not refuse to sign his abuser's NDA, and it destroyed him, his sister testified Wednesday to the Texas House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence committee.
Carlock suffered 10 years of abuse at the hands of serial pedophile Pete Newman, who was found guilty of molesting at least 57 victims while he was a counselor at Kanakuk Kamps in Branson, Mo. The lingering trauma left Carlock without a lifeline, ultimately leading to his death, his sister said.
Newman was handed two life sentences plus 30 years for abusing six boys at the Christian camp. He was denied parole in October.
Elizbeth Phillips, Carlock’s older sister, told the committee that her brother was “silenced to his grave” by Kanakuk’s restrictive NDA.
