870
submitted 4 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Lawyers for Donald Trump’s former faith advisor Robert Morris accused a 12-year-old girl of initiating “inappropriate” sexual conduct with the ex-Dallas megachurch  pastor, new documents have revealed.

Morris resigned in June after admitting to the incident. His accuser Cindy Clemishire previously claimed that the pastor had begun abusing her on Christmas Day in 1982.

Clemishire, now 52, said that Morris and his wife had been staying at her family home at the time when he asked her to come into his room, whereafter he told her to lay on his bed and then began touching her inappropriately.

She said the abuse had continued until 1987 when she told her parents.

However, 25 years after the incident, a lawyer for Morris – J Shelby Sharpe – claimed that it was the child who was actually to blame.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

They can certainly attempt to, particularly if they've previously been abused by a caregiver. It's totally something you're trained to deal with if you work with vulnerable children, as it's a major indicator of this. Teenagers are a bit different as they are exploring their sexuality and may incorporate this into disruptive behaviour if they notice it gets a reaction. Neither of these situations would serve as a legal defence, however, were you to start joining in. A colleague had a fourteen-year-old girl in a hitched-up skirt come and sit on his lap and pout because he told her off in class. He just stared at the wall until she got off, then went and reported it.

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

Yeah - if you are a teacher you ALWAYS leave the door cracked open, never alone with a kid.

Those kinds of kids almost always have genuinely experienced sexual abuse elsewhere. I’m working with a child who does exhibit that kind of behavior - propositioning adults/other teens and then claiming assault when rejected. The thing with kids and false allegations is that they are usually wildly inconsistent - as long as organizational safeguards are in place, it’s usually easy to verify that the claimed event didn’t happen. It is a STRONG indicator for previous experiences of abuse though.

This case is not at all consistent with what false allegations look like.

this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
870 points (99.7% liked)

News

23284 readers
3512 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS