Former Gateway Church pastor Robert Morris has appeared in a new Texas sex offender registry photograph with a black eye and what appears to be a swollen lip.
The image, dated Tuesday, September 15, was taken after Morris attended a quarterly verification appointment with law enforcement officials in Palo Pinto County, according to the Texas Public Sex Offender Website.
Robert Morris says injuries followed a fall
Morris’s lawyer, Bill Mateja, said the former North Texas megachurch leader lost consciousness in his garage last week while bending down to pick something up.
“When he raised up, he passed out and fell,” Mateja said. “He first hit a car door and then fell to the concrete floor. His wife, Debbie, was with him at the time.”
Mateja said Morris was treated in an emergency department for three broken bones in his face and was recovering. His doctors believe the episode may have been linked to blood pressure medication taken on an empty stomach, the lawyer said.
“This was a medical incident,” Mateja said, adding that the family had provided the explanation to ensure an accurate account.
The appointment was Morris’s first registry check-in since he was released from an Oklahoma jail in March. He registered as a sex offender in Texas the following month.
Morris, the founding pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty in October 2025 to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. The charges related to abuse of Cindy Clemishire, which she said began when she was 12 and continued for four and a half years in the 1980s.
He was sentenced under a plea agreement to a 10-year suspended sentence, with six months served in the Osage County Jail, and is due to remain on probation until 2036. He will be required to remain on the sex offender register for life.
