Leigh Corfman, one of the first women to go public with allegations of sexual misconduct against Alabama Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore, said her decision to come forward was not politically motivated.
She’s voted as a Republican for “years and years and years,” she said Monday during an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.
“But this isn’t political for me. This is personal. It’s very close to my heart and I’ve lived with this for a very long time,” she said, speaking publicly for the first time since The Washington Post detailed the incidents surrounding the inappropriate sexual encounters Moore allegedly pursued with her when she was just 14-years-old and the former judge was in his 30s. Multiple women have come forward since the story broke Nov. 9 and Moore has denied all the allegations, calling it a political attack from the media.
Many of Moore’s supporters have argued that if Corfman and the other women were telling the truth, they would’ve come out earlier in Moore’s political career.
Corfman said she weighed coming forward for years during his various campaigns, but decided against it because she was a single mother with young children.
“When you’re in that situation, you do everything you can to protect your own,” she said Monday. “I sat in the Courthouse a lot thinking ‘I’m going to go in, I’m going to confront him.’ This was 2000, 2001, and I wanted to walk into his office and say, ‘Hey remember me? You need to knock this stuff off. I need to go public.’ My children were small so I didn’t do it.”
She said the second time she contemplated coming forward with her allegations her children were older and she asked them to make the decision. Her kids were afraid of the social repercussions of their mother coming forward, so they decided not to do it at the time, she said.
“So when The Washington Post sought me out, I didn’t go looking for this, this fell in my lap. It literally fell in my lap and I had to make a decision,” she said. “I told them at that time, the reporters, they were all just wonderful to me, that if they found additional people that I would tell my story.”
Moore and his wife, Kayla Moore, have also floated accusations that the women who came forward were paid by the Post to make up their stories, which Corfman strongly refuted.
“Absolutely not, absolutely not. If anything, this has cost me. I’ve had to take leave from my job,” she said.
When asked by “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie what she makes of Moore’s defense that he doesn’t know who she is, Corfman responded chillingly.
“I wonder how many mes he doesn’t know,” she said.
Watch the full interview below:
WATCH: @savannahguthrie's full interview with Roy Moore's 1st accuser, Leigh Corfman, who says Moore sexually abused her when she was 14 pic.twitter.com/ll4FGmPvUZ
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 20, 2017
