Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore engaged in a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32, according to a report from The Washington Post. He also romantically pursued at least three other teenage girls while in his 30s.
Leigh Corfman, now 53, and her mother recalled that Moore approached her in a courthouse in 1979 and offered to watch Corfman while her mother had to attend a 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, 71-year-old Nancy Wells, told The Post. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”
“He was charming and smiley,” Corfman told The Post.
According to Corfman’s account, she and Moore spoke at the courthouse that day, and the two later began talking on the phone. They made plans for Moore to pick her up to get together.
Roy Moore was also removed from the Alabama Supreme Court — twice — for his extreme views and also called Islam a “fake religion.”
Not having any sexual experience beyond kissing at that point, Corfman recalled to The Post a “giddy, excited” feeling — which quickly disappeared when Moore picked her up to bring her to his house.
“I remember the further I got from my house, the more nervous I got,” Corfman told The Post.
At Moore’s house the two talked and Moore eventually kissed Corfman, she said. Uncomfortable, she asked him to take her home.
But when Moore called again, she said she agreed to see him.
“This was a new experience, and it was exciting and fun and scary,” Corfman said to The post. “It was just like this roller-coaster ride you’ve not been on.”
The second time, according to Corfman, Moore at one point was naked except for a pair of “tight white” underwear.
According to The Post:
“[Corfman] remembers that Moore kissed her, that he took off her pants and shirt, and that he touched her through her bra and underpants. She says that he guided her hand to his underwear and that she yanked her hand back.
“‘I wasn’t ready for that — I had never put my hand on a man’s penis, much less an erect one,’ Corfman says.”
Three other women shared stories of Moore pursuing them when they were ages 14, 17 and 18. They did not report any sexual encounters that went beyond kissing but said they found the attention “flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older.”
The woman who was 18 at the time recalled drinking wine with Moore. In Alabama, where the incident took place, the legal drinking age was nineteen.
Sixteen was then — and is now — the age of consent in Alabama.
Moore called Corfman’s account “completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign.”
Birther Republican Senate candidate Moore previously told a jury he does not collect a “regular salary” from the charity, which also employs two of Moore’s children.
But Republicans are listening.
Republican Alabama Sen. Luther Strange said to BuzzFeed News, “It’s a very, very disturbing report. That’s all I have to say. I’ve just seen it and I’ll have more to say.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called for Moore to exit the race for Senate if Corfman’s account is true.
“If these allegations are true, he must step aside,” he said in a statement.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said ti reporters, “I’m horrified, and if this is true he needs to step down immediately.”
