Anti-gay Senate candidate Roy Moore has ‘sexually abused five teenagers’
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Anti-LGBT Senate candidate Roy Moore has been accused of sexually assaulting a fifth teenager.
Beverly Young Nelson alleged that while she was 16 and Moore was District Attorney, he sexually abused her, “forcing her head toward his crotch”.
“I thought he was going to rape me,” she said of the current Republican Senate candidate for Alabama, choking back tears at the memory.
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During a press conference in New York City, she described how she was a 15-year-old restaurant waitress when Moore began complimenting her looks and pulling her hair when she passed him.
“I had a boyfriend…even if I had not had a boyfriend I was not interested in having a dating or sexual relationship with a man twice my age,” she said.
Moore signed her yearbook when she brought it into work, she said, with the message: “to a sweeter, more beautiful girl I could not say Merry Christmas. Love Roy Moore, D.A.”.
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The handwriting present in a copy of the yearbook shown by her lawyer Gloria Allred matches that of Moore on other documents.
In December 1977, a month after Nelson’s 16th birthday, Moore offered to drive her home.
Nelson accepted, saying that she had trusted Moore because he was the District Attorney.
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Once they were in the car, she said Moore drove to a dark and deserted area behind the restaurant and started groping her after she asked what was happening.
She tried to leave, but Moore locked the door.
He then began squeezing her neck, forcing her head toward his crotch and trying to yank her shirt off, Nelson said.
“I thought he was going to rape me. I was twisting and struggling and begging him to stop,” she recalled, holding back tears.
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Nelson also described how she was scared to tell anyone, using makeup to cover up the bruises.
Moore responded by dismissing the accusation as a “political manoeuvre”.
“I can tell you without hesitation, this is absolutely false,” the disgraced former judge said.
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“I never did what she said I did. I don’t even know the woman. I don’t know anything about her. I don’t even know where the restaurant is or was,” he added.
Last week, it was revealed that he allegedly sexually abused 14-year-old Leigh Corfman in 1979, when Moore, an assistant district attorney, was 32.
While at his home, she said he removed her shirt and trousers and stripped off his clothes, touching her over her bra and underpants.
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He also guided her hand to touch him over his underwear and gave her alcohol, she alleged.
Enticing a child under 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts is – and was – a felony which means up to 10 years in prison.
Three other women also told The Washington Post that Moore pursued them sexually while they aged between 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s.
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Moore, who “doesn’t know” if gay people should be executed, is now neck-and-neck in the race for the US Senate seat vacated by Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
This is despite 37 percent of Evangelical Christians saying they were more likely to vote for him following the allegations.
Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader of the Senate, has called on Moore to step down.
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He has been joined by 13 other senators and four congressmen from the Republican Party – plus Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush – in calling on Moore to drop out of the race.
Unlike these 18 lawmakers, Donald Trump has opted for the lesser option, stating through Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that Moore should step aside “if these allegations are true”.
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Moore was previously enthusiastically backed in the race by Trump, despite being the most homophobic candidate for the US Senate in recent history.
The special election between Moore and Democratic Party candidate Doug Jones, which follows Attorney General Jeff Sessions vacating the seat, is set for December 12.
