Gateway Church has fired four of its elders after receiving a report from a law firm hired to conduct an internal investigation into its founder’s alleged sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl, a church leader announced Saturday.

Church elder Tra Willbanks said during the service that all but three of the church’s elders knew that former senior pastor Robert Morris had had sexual contact with a 12-year-old, or had received some information about the situation and “failed to inquire further ‘.

“We have decided to draw a very bright line here, based on Biblical and moral values ​​and the values ​​of our church family, and we can report to you that as of today, no individual in either group is an elder, employed by or working at Gateway Church,” Willbanks said, drawing applause from the audience at the megachurch’s Southlake campus.

The removal came after Haynes Boone, a law firm the church hired to investigate the allegations, filed a report with a subcommittee of elders including Willbanks, Kenneth Fambro and Dane Minor. Willbanks gave a summary of the report to church congregants during Gateway’s Saturday service.

Willbanks said the church is also cooperating with a criminal investigation.

“I can share that neither the church nor its current leadership are the subject of this criminal investigation,” he said.

Elders Thomas Miller, Gayland Lawshe, Kevin Grove and Jeremy Carrasco were no longer visible on Gateway’s older page on the church’s website as of 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

Willbanks took the stage Saturday about 10 minutes after Gateway’s service to give the recap. Willbanks also praised Cindy Clemishire, the woman who came forward in June to report that Morris sexually assaulted her in the 1980s. He said she was brave for coming forward, a statement that was received with applause by congregants.

He condemned Morris in the strongest words the church has yet used. Willbanks said that on the day Clemishire came forward with allegations that Morris abused her in the 1980s, starting when she was 12 years old, Morris directed church staff to release a statement with the intention of minimizing her claims.

“Robert Morris directed Gateway employees to release a statement intended to minimize the seriousness of Cindy’s claims in a last-ditch effort to conceal the truth,” he said. “Cindy was not a consenting adult, but rather a 12-year-old child and victim of sexual abuse.”

Willbanks said elders were able to independently verify elements of Clemishire’s story and requested a meeting with Morris, who resigned without meeting with elders.

Morris also refused to meet with Haynes Boone during the investigation, Willbanks said.

The church will review its bylaws and governance structure, Willbanks said. In the past, the church was governed by a group of elders, consisting of both church employees in other positions and people with full-time jobs elsewhere. Going forward, all voting members of Gateway’s board of directors will be non-staff employees, Willbanks said.

“We need to bring this level of independence and objectivity to our elders, and that has been lacking in recent years,” he said.

Willbanks said the staff will no longer serve as elders, with the exception of the church’s future senior pastor or possibly an executive pastor. Willbanks said both positions would be non-voting elders.

“The truth is that the events of the last few months have shown that there has been a major lack of governance and accountability here at Gateway Church,” Willbanks said at the end of his remarks. “It was a failure of culture, and we must be honest with ourselves and recognize that our culture allowed this truth to remain hidden for too long.”

Willbanks also said the investigation found no other incidents of sexual abuse by Morris.

“To our knowledge, there are no victims of Robert Morris other than Cindy Clemishire,” Willbanks said.

Willbanks said Gateway’s culture had become centralized around Morris, allowing the truth to remain hidden for years.

“If a church focuses only around one pastor, it has lost its way,” Willbanks said. “Unfortunately, in recent months we have come to realize that at some point in the past the culture at Gateway became one in which power was centralized and the leader at the top was surrounded by people who wanted to protect him, some of them at all costs.”

In June, Clemishire told Christian blog The Wartburg Watch that Morris sexually abused her from 1982 to 1987, starting when she was 12. Morris founded Gateway Church in 2000.

The news has attempted to reach Morris at multiple phone numbers and has sent letters to four addresses listed for him in public records, but has not heard back. The news sent a letter seeking comment to a registered address for each of the church’s seven current elders listed as of Oct. 31, but received no response.

On June 28, Gateway Church said in a post on its website that four of its elders were temporarily stepping aside at the advice of Haynes Boone. Three of them — Kevin Grove, Steve Dulin and Gayland Lawshe — were elders between 2005 and 2007, when Clemishire said she contacted Morris to confront him about the alleged abuse and possibly prosecute him. Steve Dulin was later let go.

“As Haynes and Boone begin their work, they have recommended that any Gateway Church Elder with a potential conflict of interest take a temporary leave of absence from the Board of Elders,” a statement on Gateway’s website said at the time. “This includes all elders with a relationship conflict and the elders who served on the board between 2005 and 2007.”

Since June, the church has been named as a defendant in multiple lawsuits unrelated to the Morris abuse allegations.

The latest lawsuit, filed on Oct. 4 by former members of Gateway, accused the church and its former leaders of failing to keep their promise to donate 15% of the church’s tithes to foreign missionary work.

The lawsuit names four Gateway Church leaders as defendants: Robert Morris, Thomas Lane, Kevin Grove and Steve Dulin.

It also accuses Grove of telling a certified public accountant hired by the church to “stop reconciling accounts” after he was allegedly informed of financial irregularities.

On Oct. 5, a church elder said during a Saturday service that the church is in the process of joining the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. That group requires churches to share audited financial statements with the public upon written request, its website states, and to have a governing body with a majority of independent board members.

Adrian Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for The Dallas Morning News through a partnership with Report for America.