On Sean Hannity’s radio show this afternoon, Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore responded to recent allegations of sexual misconduct. Moore categorically denied ever knowing Leigh Corfman, the woman who says Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her in February of 1979, when she was 14 and he was 32.
Of the accounts of the other women, Wendy Miller, Debbie Wesson Gibson, and Gloria Thacker Deason, who say that Moore pursued relationships with them when they were in their late teens, Moore was more equivocal. He said he recognized the names of Wesson-Gibson and Deason. “I remember her as a good girl,” he said about both. But Moore said he didn’t remember going on dates with them: “Neither of [Thacker or Wesson] have ever stated any inappropriate behavior,” Moore said, adding “I don’t remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother.”
When Hannity asked Moore if he denied dating teenagers while he was in his 30s, Moore said: “It would have been out of my customary behavior.”
The Washington Post reported several details that appear to support Corfman’s account. Two women recall Corfman telling them she was seeing an older man at the time, and one of those women recalls Corfman identifying the man as Moore. Both Corfman and her mother, Nancy Wells, said Moore first approached Corfman outside of a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. The Post confirmed that Wells had a hearing at that courthouse in February of 1979 via divorce records.
Nevertheless, Moore denied the charge, calling it “a political, direct attack on this campaign.” “I would have never had any contact with [Corfman], nothing with her mother or in a courthouse or anywhere else,” he said. “In fact, her allegations contradict the whole behavior pattern that two of the young ladies even witnessed herself.”