Roy Moore, a former Alabama state judge and current GOP nominee to replace Jeff Sessions for the vacated U.S. Senate seat, was the centerpiece of an explosive Washington Post investigative story. The piece zeroed in on accusations that Moore sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl when he was 32 years of age, and carried on inappropriate relationships with a number of other teenage girls. The Post writes: Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore. It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside 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,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.” Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear. The Post also spoke with three other women who all said Moore was a romantic fixture in their lives but didn’t say he assaulted them. In a statement, Moore called the claims “completely false” and actually put blame on Democrats and the Post by framing the story as a smear campaign. Adding to Moore’s predicament is Fox News host Sean Hannity defending Moore and quoting a bible verse essentially calling the charges false. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell and others from the party have called for Moore to step aside if the allegations hold true. Still, observers on Twitter has begun a #RoyMooreChildMolester” hashtag that has been trending since the Post‘s story went live Thursday (Nov. 9). https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://twitter.com/emjbourne/status/928918776065687552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://twitter.com/battletested5/status/928965228922056704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js [h/t Crooks and Liars] — Photo: screen cap
