An Alabama woman on Monday said Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager, the fifth woman to accuse Moore of making improper sexual advances on her in recent days.
Beverly Young Nelson said a during press conference with attorney Gloria Allred that the alleged assault occurred when she was 16 years old.
“Mr. Moore attacked me when I was a child. I did nothing to deserve this sexual attack. I was frightened by his position, by his power,” Nelson said.
Nelson said Moore offered her a ride home from work, then attempted to force her to have sex with him, leaving bruises on her neck as she struggled to free herself and refusing to stop when she asked.
“I tried to open my car door to leave, but he reached over and he locked it so I could not get out. I tried fighting him off while yelling at him to stop. But instead of stopping, 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,” Nelson said. “I was terrified. He was also trying to pull my shirt off. I thought that he was going to rape me.”
Beverly Nelson details her allegations against Roy Moore: "Mr. Moore reached over and began groping me and putting his hands on my breasts." pic.twitter.com/Utm1diconW
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) November 13, 2017
Moore eventually stopped, Nelson said, and warned her no one would believe her if she shared her story.
“He said, ‘you’re just a child,’ and he said, ‘I am the district attorney of Etowah County, and if you tell anyone about this, no one will ever believe you,'” she said.
Allred showed a page from the woman’s high school yearbook she said Moore had signed with a flirtatious note.
“She was sexually assaulted by Roy Moore,” Allred said, calling for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing on the matter and subpoenaing Moore to testify.
Nelson is the fifth woman to accuse Moore of having made sexual advances on her when she was a teenager — including one who was 14 at the time.
But Moore has remained defiant.
“Gloria Allred is a sensationalist leading a witch hunt, and she is only around to create a spectacle. Allred was the attorney who claims credit for giving us Roe v. Wade which has resulted in the murder of tens of millions of unborn babies,” Moore campaign chairman Bill Armistead said in a statement released before Allred’s press conference began. “We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: Judge Moore is an innocent man and has never had any sexual misconduct with anyone.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called for Moore to exit the race Monday morning, declaring he believed Moore’s accusers and talking about a possible write-in campaign.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Cory Gardner (R-CO) went a step further immediately after Nelson’s press conference, calling for a vote to expel Moore from the Senate if he wins.
“I believe the individuals speaking out against Roy Moore spoke with courage and truth, proving he is unfit to serve in the United States Senate and he should not run for office. If he refuses to withdraw and wins, the Senate should vote to expel him, because he does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate,” Gardner said.
National Republicans can’t do anything to force Moore out of the race, however. There’s no way to remove him from the ballot itself. The state Republican Party can decertify its endorsement, disqualifying him as a candidate and backing a write-in candidate to run, but that’d take a vote from local party leaders to do so.
It would take 67 votes to expel Moore from the Senate if he does win the Dec. 12 election. Initial polls after the first allegations surfaced on Thursday showed Moore in a competitive race with Democrat Doug Jones in deep-red Alabama, and the latest allegations could further damage his campaign.
