Another Woman Accuses Roy Moore of Sexual Assault

Beverly Young Nelson says she was just 16 when Moore attacked her
By Josh Rosenblatt,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 13, 2017 4:05 PM CST
Another Woman Accuses Roy Moore of Sexual Assault
   (AP Photo/Hal Yeager)

Just hours after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called on Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore to "step aside" in Alabama's special election, another woman accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. At a press conference Monday with attorney Gloria Allred, Beverly Young Nelson said Moore assaulted her in a restaurant parking lot in 1977, when she was 15 or 16, the Hill reports. Nelson said Moore, who was the district attorney of Etowah County, Ala., at the time, offered to drive her home after her shift at a diner but instead drove the car to a dark area of the parking lot and started groping her, pushing her head toward his crotch, and trying to take her shirt off. "I also thought he was trying to rape me. I had tears running down my face,” Nelson said.

At the press conference Nelson said she feared retaliation from Moore if she ever spoke about the encounter. “I thought he would do something to me or my family so I decided to keep what happened to myself,” she said. In a statement released before the press conference, the Moore campaign denied "any sexual misconduct with anyone" and accused Allred of being a "sensationalist leading a witch hunt," the New York Times reports. Earlier Monday, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Sen. Cory Gardner, said if Moore wins the race, the Senate should vote to expel him "because he does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate," Politico reports. (More Roy Moore stories.)

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