Gateway Church sued over child sexual assault

DALLAS – KERA reports that a woman who says she was sexually assaulted as a teen in the Gateway Church is suing the church and a former member of her youth group, saying pastors and counselors failed to prevent the alleged abuse. According to the suit, the woman was 13 years old when she was groomed and sexually assaulted by a high school senior in 2016. The alleged abuser is currently in prison for another assault of a minor. KERA News is withholding the identities of both, because they were minors at the time of the incident. The woman says the church did nothing to prevent the series of assaults over the span of three months despite multiple surveillance cameras in the area in which the abuse occurred. The suit also says there may be other girls who were assaulted by the same person. The woman and her family are suing for assault, negligence and breach of special relationship claims and are seeking more than $1 million in damages.

KERA News reached out to Gateway for comment and will update this story with any response. According to the suit, the two teens met during weekly youth group meetings on Wednesday nights. The meetings were held at The King’s University in Southlake, an off-site location near Gateway. The accuser says the teen boy began grooming her in December 2016, and “cynically used the biblical beliefs and teachings of Defendant Gateway’s pastor and ministers to convince 13-year-old [girl] that it was the will of God, and the leaders of Defendant Gateway, that she submit to him because he was a male and she was a female.” The suit states he took the girl outside the King’s University “into the darkness” where he sexually assaulted her multiple times. The abuse continued until February 2017 while the girl was still 13 and the boy was 18 years old, according to the suit. The youth group was geared to children ranging in age from 11 to 18 years old with at least 200 children at the nighttime youth group meetings with little or no supervision, according to the suit.