Gateway Church is dealing with more sexual assault allegations, this time from someone who was allegedly victimized as a teen by a fellow youth group member. A lawsuit filed Aug. 14 by former “devout and active members of the church” names both the Dallas-area megachurch and Gabriel Reece Snyder, now 25, as defendants.
According to the lawsuit, starting in 2016, Snyder (then 17) groomed and assaulted the plaintiffs’ daughter (then 13) at Gateway youth group meetings. Snyder, who is currently in jail for an unrelated sexual assault of a child, hasn’t been criminally charged in this new case.
Parents of the alleged victim, who is now an adult, are requesting a jury trial. They are seeking monetary damages of more than $1 million.
In June, Gateway founder and senior pastor Robert Morris resigned amid a sexual abuse scandal. Two months earlier, the church settled a lawsuit involving the 2018 sexual abuse of a minor. (Morris was not involved with that case.)
New Lawsuit Alleges Abuse Within Gateway Youth Group
The new lawsuit alleges that Snyder groomed the plaintiffs’ daughter while both teens attended Gateway Church youth group, held at The King’s University in Southlake. About 200 participants from grades six through 12 attended the weekly Wednesday-night meetings on campus.
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Parents of the alleged victim accuse Gateway of providing “little or no supervision” by the church’s “youth counselors, pastors, leaders, chaperones, or volunteers.” Their lawsuit states that Snyder “cynically used the biblical beliefs and teachings of Defendant Gateway’s pastor and ministers to convince 13-year-old [victim] 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.”
Snyder allegedly took the girl “into the darkness outside” on the campus to assault her. Although surveillance cameras were present near those areas, “nobody from Defendant Gateway ever came to [victim]’s aid,” the lawsuit alleges. The girl’s parents indicate that she was abused from December 2016 through February 2017, by which time Snyder had turned 18.
More Details From New Lawsuit Against Gateway
The plaintiffs also claim that Gateway formed a “special” or “confidential” relationship with them, as “devout and active members” of the church. They allege that Gateway breached that relationship, inflicting emotional damage through fraud.