WHAT MOORE DO YOU NEED!
Roy wrote love note in 16-yr.-old’s yearbook Tried to force oral sex & choked me, she says
REPUBLICAN SENATE candidate Roy Moore of Alabama grabbed the neck of a 16-year-old girl and tried to force her head into his crotch after offering her a ride home from work in the 1970s, the tearful victim said Monday.
Beverly Young Nelson, the fifth woman to accuse the Bible Belt Republican of sexual misconduct that occurred decades ago, when the alleged victims were all teens, said Monday that Moore violently attacked her in his car.
The former beauty pageant contestant said Moore — who’d signed her high school yearbook — had offered her a ride home at the end of one of her shifts at the Olde Hickory House restaurant in Gadsden, Ala., where she worked as a waitress.
But instead of driving onto the highway as she expected, he pulled around to the back, parked in a dark spot beside a dumpster, locked her door and began groping her breasts .
“He began squeezing my neck attempting to force my head onto his crotch. I continued to struggle. I was determined that I was not going to allow him to force me to have sex with him,” an emotional Young Nelson, 55, said at a press conference in New York, with her husband and lawyer Gloria Allred.
“I was terrified. He was also trying to pull my shirt off. 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,” she said.
She said Moore eventually gave up and issued a chilling warning.
“You are a child. I am the district attorney of Etowah County. If you tell anyone about this, no one will believe you,” she recalled him saying.
Moore eventually unlocked the car door, and she either “fell out or he pushed me out,” Young Nelson said.
She said Moore previously tried to flirt with her by tugging at her waist-length red hair as she passed him inside the restaurant. But she “was not interested in having a dating or sexual relationship with a man twice my age.”
On Monday, she produced one of her high school yearbooks and said Moore signed it shortly before the alleged attack.
“To a sweeter more beautiful girl I could not say, ‘Merry Christmas,’ ” Moore wrote on Dec. 22, 1977, when he was 30.
He signed it, “Love, Roy Moore D.A.” and cited the location as “Olde Hickory House.”
Allred urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a public hearing on the allegations as soon as possible and allow Young Nelson to testify under oath.
“We believe that since Mr. Moore is seeking a seat in the United States Senate he should support testimony under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee so that the facts can be determined in an open forum and in a fair manner,” Allred said.
Moore on Monday told reporters in Alabama he didn’t know Young Nelson. “I never did what she said I did. I don’t even know the woman . . . I don’t even know where the restaurant is or was,” he said. Moore also called Allred a “sensationalist leading a witch hunt” and said he was the victim of a political hit campaign by Democrats and establishment Republicans. Young Nelson’s allegations follow a bombshell Washington Post exposé in which four women said Moore targeted them for dates when he was in his early 30s and they were ages 14, 16, 17 and 18. The accusations have challenged his fitness to face Democrat Doug Jones in a critical Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Washington Post on Thursday first revealed chief accuser Leigh Corfman and her damaging claims she was only 14 years old when a 32-year-old Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her in 1979. Corfman said Moore, then an assistant district attorney, approached her and her mother outside an Etowah County courtroom and offered to watch her while the mom went in-
side for a child custody hearing.
Corfman said Moore asked for her phone number and later picked her up around the corner from her residence for two secret visits to his secluded house in the woods.
On the first visit, Moore kissed her and complimented her looks, she said.
During the second visit, Moore allegedly removed his clothes, touched her through her bra and underpants and guided her hand to touch his erect penis over his underwear, she said.
Moore, 70, said he doesn’t “remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother.”
The Post piece published Thursday also quoted three other women who said a thirtysomething Moore pursued romantic relationships with them when they were teenagers.
Moore recalled knowing two of the accusers, Gloria Thacker Deason and Debbie Wesson Gibson, but said he couldn’t “remember going out on dates” with them.
Gadsden locals, where Moore was born, said it was whispered around town that he’d once been banned from the local mall for badgering young girls, according to The New Yorker. Two of Moore’s accusers said they met Moore at Gadsden Mall, and The Post said some ex-employees recalled seeing him there frequently, “usually alone” and “well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that Moore “should step aside” in light of the allegations.
Other senators — including Texans Ted Cruz and John Cornyn — withdrew their endorsements of Moore.
Moore responded by saying it’s McConnell (inset, opposite page) who should quit.
“The person who should step aside is @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell. He has failed conservatives and must be replaced. #DrainTheSwamp,” he tweeted.