GOP’ERS TELL MOORE: QUIT!
New accuser bares assault claim
Top Republicans on Monday demanded that Senate GOP candidate Roy Moore quit the race over explosive sexual-assault allegations, as a new accuser came forward to claim he locked her in a car and groped her when she was 16.
“I think he should step aside,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday over accusations last week that the former Alabama district attorney and judge fondled a 14-year-old when he was 32 and hit on several other teens. “I believe the women,” McConnell said.
His remarks were supported by several other Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine and Orrin Hatch of Utah.
However, Moore can only be removed from the ballot by Alabama state GOP leaders — who have shown no signs of ditching him.
Moore, 70, was undeterred Monday, firing back that it’s McConnell who should step aside.
“He has failed conservatives and must be replaced,” Moore tweeted.
The backlash unfolded as another accuser spoke up.
Beverly Young Nelson told re- porters that Moore assaulted her when she was 16 and he was around 30 — then used his position as local district attorney to threaten her into silence.
Nelson says she was working as a waitress at the Olde Hickory House in Gadsden, Ala., in 1977 and Moore was a regular customer — so she accepted the offer of a lift home one night when her boyfriend was late to pick her up.
Instead, she says, Moore drove them behind the restaurant.
“I tried to open my car door to leave, but he reached over and locked it so I could not get out. I tried fighting him off while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stop- ping, he began squeezing my neck, attempting to force my head onto his crotch. I continued to struggle.
“He was also struggling to pull my shirt off,” she said at a press conference in Manhattan with attorney Gloria Allred.
“I thought that he was going to rape me. I was twisting and struggling and begging him to stop. I had tears running down my face.”
Moore finally gave up and let her out, but warned her, “You are a child. I am the district attorney of Etowah County. If you tell anyone about this, no one will believe you,” Nelson claimed.
The next day, her neck was “black and blue and purple” and she quit her job, she said.
Later Monday, Moore denied he ever knew Nelson — despite the fact that his signature appears in her high-school yearbook.
“This is absolutely false,” Moore said. “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.”
Meanwhile, residents in Alabama told Al.com that Moore was known to creep out teenagers at the Gadsden Mall in the 1970s.
“He would go and flirt with all the young girls,” said Blake Usry.
“Nobody could believe they hadn’t come out yet.”