Cindy Clemishire poses for a photo at her home in Jones, Oklahoma, on Aug. 6, 2024. Clemishire says Robert Morris, the founder of Gateway Church, began sexually abusing her when she was 12. (Juan Figueroa/Dallas Morning News/TNS)

AUSTIN — Four North Texas lawmakers are proposing to abolish nondisclosure agreements in child sexual abuse settlements, which often force victims to stay silent for the rest of their lives about their abuse.

The bills are awaiting hearings in House and Senate committees.

Leading the fight to do away with NDAs — often signed as part of an agreement to settle sexual abuse lawsuits — is Plano Republican Rep. Jeff Leach, whose House committee last year heard Oklahoma resident Cindy Clemishire, 54, tell of her abuse as a child by Southlake megachurch pastor Robert Morris, then a traveling evangelist.

According to her testimony in the October public hearing at the state Capitol, Clemishire first came forward at age 17, but nothing happened to Morris. When she sued in 2005 to collect money to cover her counseling expenses, she was offered $25,000 to settle and sign a nondisclosure agreement, Clemishire testified.

Her refusal to sign the NDA, she said, gave her the strength to survive the trauma as an adult because she was allowed to talk about it.

“I’m sitting here today because I did not accept that offer and refused to sign an NDA saying I couldn’t speak about my life,” she told the committee.

Healing, she said, “is a lifelong journey, and to tell someone they cannot speak of that ever again, I don’t know how that could ever be in the best interest of a victim.”

Morris, 63, was founder and senior pastor at Gateway Church in Southlake when Clemishire made her allegations public in media interviews last summer. Morris resigned a few days later and was indicted Wednesday in Oklahoma on five counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child in connection with Clemishire’s allegations, the Oklahoma attorney general announced Wednesday.

Leach has filed House Bill 748, which would render “void and unenforceable” any nondisclosure agreement that prohibits victims of child sexual abuse to report the abuse to law enforcement or talk about it publicly or privately. Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, has identical legislation in the Senate.

Similar proposals also have been filed by Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, and Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield.

“I hope to see the future change so that it’s normalized to talk about it, to expose it, and to prevent it,” Clemishire told Leach’s committee. “Allowing people to speak freely of their experiences is the only way that will ever happen.”