Alabama Senate Candidate Roy Moore Accused Of Sexual Assault In 1979 Incident With Leigh Corfman, Then 14 Years Old

Leigh Corfman has accused Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual assault starting in 1979.

ROY MOORE ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

Corfman says that when she was 14-years-old and Moore was 32, he initiated a sexual encounter with her.  Corfman was accompanying her mother, Nancy Wells, now 71, to a child custody hearing. Moore, an assistant district attorney at the time, offered to watch Corfman while her mother went into the courtroom. “He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay our here with her,'” Wells told The New York Times. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

Corfman, now 53, says Moore chatted with her and eventually asked for her phone number. Days later, he picked her up from her home and drove her 30 minutes to his house in the woods, told her she was pretty, and kissed her. On a second visit, Corfman claims that Moore removed both his and her clothing down to their underwear, and touched her above her bra and underpants. He then had her touch him over his underwear.

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she recalled. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” She then asked Moore to take her home and she did. Two of Corfman’s childhood friends confirm that she relayed the encounter to them at the time, and one was able to identify Moore. Wells says her daughter shared the information with her about a decade after the fact, when Moore was becoming a more prominent local judge. Records also show that Wells did attend a child custody hearing at the named local courthouse in 1979, when Corfman alleges the incidents took place.

Three other women were interviewed in recent weeks who claimed that Moore pursued them when they were between 16 and 18, and he in his early 30s. None of them, however, reported that the politician forced himself on them sexually, or did anything other than kiss. Of the four women, Corfman was the youngest, and the only one to report that the sexual contact went beyond kissing.

Moore denied all allegations and blamed the Democratic party in a written statement. “These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” said Moore, now 70. He also asserted that if the claims were true, they would have come up sooner, during his past campaigns. “This garbage is the very definition of fake news,” he added.

Corfman says she has thought about confronting Moore for years, and almost did in 2000 when Moore first ran for state Supreme Court. She claimed she didn’t because she had two young children, and didn’t want to cause them any harm. She also stated concern for her credibility, as she had been divorced three times and had a messy financial history.

Corfman described her story six times to the Washington Post and was consistent throughout. “I have prayed over this,” she says. “All I know is that I can’t sit back and let this continue, let him continue without the mask being removed.”

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a handful of other GOP senators have said that Moore must step down from his position if Corfman’s account is true. It was also determined in the ongoing investigation that none of the four accusers knew each other before this, and that none of them ever worked for Moore’s Democratic or Republican opponents in any campaign races. Additionally, Corfman has voted for Republicans in the past three presidential elections, including for Donald Trump in 2016.