Roy Moore has been accused of initiating sexual contact with a 14 year-old girl when he was 32 in an explosive report from the Washington Post.
Moore, who is running for Senate in Alabama, is one of the most staunchly anti-LGBTQ politicians in the country. The reports of inappropriate behavior date back to his time as an assistant district attorney.
Leigh Corfman said she was sitting with her mother outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Alabama, when Moore introduced himself. As both she and her mother recall, he said he would watch over her while the mother went into court for a child custody hearing.
“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,'” Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, told the Post. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”
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Corfman said he then asked her about her interests, and asked for her phone number.
Days later, Moore is said to have picked the 14 year-old up around the corner from her house. She said he then drove her the thirty minutes out to his home in the woods, where he told her how pretty she was and kissed her.
She said she went back a second time, explaining that at the time she was thinking of it as “a new experience, and it was exciting and fun and scary,” where things escalated.
Corfman said he removed her clothes, fondled her over her underwear, and, wearing only underwear himself, tried to get her to touch his penis. She said she pulled back and asked to be taken home, which he did.
“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembered thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.”
She also reported that he gave her alcohol on either the first or second visit to his home.
Two of her friends at the time recall her talking about spending time with an older man, one of whom said she identified him as Moore.
More Allegations
The Post interviewed three other women who said Moore pursued them while they were teenagers, ranging in age from 16 to 18, while he was in his 30s. One also said she wine was involved. None of those encounters progressed past kissing.
The legal age of consent, then and now, in Alabama is 16. The legal drinking age at the time was 19.
Sexual contact, like that described by Corfman, with an underage person is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.
It is a felony, punishable by up to ten year in prison, to entice a child younger than 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts.
Moore Denies the Allegations, Under Heat from the GOP to Drop Out
“These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” Moore said in a statement.
His campaign also released a statement, asking why the allegations hadn’t come out sooner, and calling it fake news.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has called on Moore to drop out of the Alabama Senate race if the allegations are true.
“If the allegations are true, yes, I think he should step aside,” Sen. Rob Portman, of Ohio said.
Moore is running against Democrat Doug Jones.
Anti-LGBTQ Record
Moore has pitched himself as a family values conservative.
He is best known to many for his stunt in 2003, where he was removed from office after refusing to take down the Ten Commandments monument he had installed on the grounds of the state judicial building.
He said he agrees with Russia’s antigay crackdown, shared a post to Facebook that claimed LGBTQ people are to blame for the hate crimes inflicted upon them, and said in 2005 that “homosexual conduct should be illegal.”
