The Washington Post has dropped the latest sexual abuse allegation and this one is a bombshell, targeting the Republican candidate for US senate in Alabama Roy Moore. It quotes four women on-the-record who say that many years ago, when they were teens and he was a lawyer in his 30s, Moore made overtures to them

The most serious allegation was that given by Leigh Corfman about what happened when she was just 14.

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.
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Two of Corfman’s childhood friends say she told them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says Corfman identified the man as Moore. Wells says her daughter told her about the encounter more than a decade later, as Moore was becoming more prominent as a local judge.

Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.
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Neither Corfman nor any of the other women sought out The Post. While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore’s Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls. Over the ensuing three weeks, two Post reporters contacted and interviewed the four women. All were initially reluctant to speak publicly but chose to do so after multiple interviews, saying they thought it was important for people to know about their interactions with Moore. The women say they don’t know one another.

Although these are just allegations at this point, if true Moore would not be the first right-wing politician who claims to be hyper-Christian to be exposed as a fraud.

The special election for Alabama’s senate seat is on December 12 which has put the Republican party in a quandary. What surprises me is that quite a few Republican senators are distancing themselves from Moore already instead of closing ranks and attacking the newspaper report as fake news. The Republican governor of Alabama Kay Ivey has declined to endorse Moore though this may not have been connected to the sex allegations.

What worries me is what will happen to the four women who have been willing to have their names associated with the allegations. We can take it as a given that Moore’s supporters, all those good evangelical Christians, will drag their names through the mud and attack them and their families in the most vile ways. I fear that some will threaten them with physical harm for tarnishing the name of their Bible-thumping, Ten Commandment-worshipping hero.