New accuser claims sex assault by Moore
WASHINGTON — Amid new allegations that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore molested teenage girls decades ago, GOP leaders intensified their calls Monday for him to quit the race, even threatening to expel Moore if he wins. The accusations against Moore have thrown the GOP into a crisis, splintering the party and risking defeat in the Dec. 12 special election, in which polls show Democrat Doug Jones now has a MOORE
narrow lead in the Deep South state.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., called on Moore to withdraw from the race. The head of the Republican campaign committee, Sen. Cory Gardner, R-colo., said the Senate should vote to expel Moore if he is elected by Alabama voters.
“I believe the women,” Mcconnell told reporters Monday in Kentucky. “I think he should step aside.”
Four women told The Washington Post that they had been pursued by Moore when they were in their teens — one as young as 14 — and he was in his 30s, in a report published last week. The revelations come as the nation is grappling with widespread claims of sexual misconduct at the highest levels of entertainment, media and business.
Another Alabama woman stepped forward Monday, claiming Moore tried to force her into a sexual position when she was 16, after offering to give her a ride home from her waitress shift in the late 1970s.
Beverly Young Nelson, who turns 56 on Tuesday, said Moore, then a 30-year-old deputy district attorney in Etowah County, had been a regular customer at the restaurant and often complimented her on her looks.
A few days before Christmas in 1977, Nelson said, she brought her high school yearbook into the restaurant and Moore asked if he could sign it. She said yes, and he wrote, “To a sweeter more beautiful girl I could not say ‘Merry Christmas.’ ”
He signed it, “Love, Roy Moore D.A.,” according to photocopies of the page provided to reporters by Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing Nelson.