A sixth woman has come forward accusing Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual assault, saying the judge groped her in his law office 26 years ago.
In an interview with AL.com, Tina Johnson said Moore, then a married attorney, flirted with her when she visited his law office with her mother in 1991 to sign over custody of her son prior to a divorce.
“He kept commenting on my looks, telling me how pretty I was, how nice I looked,” recalled Johnson, who was 28 at the time of the incident. “He was saying that my eyes were beautiful. I was thinking, can we hurry up and get out of here?”
Johnson said Moore asked questions about her young daughters, including what color eyes they had and if they were as pretty as she was. After the papers were signed and Johnson went to leave, she said Moore waited until her mother had walked out the door and then groped her backside on the way out.
“He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” Johnson said.
“I’m not perfect,” she said. “I have things in my background and I know (the public) will jump on anything, but (what happened with Moore) is still the truth, and the truth will stand when the world won’t.”
Johnson’s accusation comes two days after Beverly Young Nelson accused Moore of assaulting her when she was 16. She made her accusation during a press conference with Gloria Allred, saying that Moore told her after the assault that “if you tell anyone about this, no one will ever believe you.” Bill Armistead, Moore’s campaign chairman, emphatically denied the charges on Moore’s behalf.
“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,” Armistead said. “This is a witch hunt against a man who has had an impeccable career for over 30 years and has always been known as a man of high character.”
In a Washington Post story published last week, Leigh Corfman said that Moore initiated a sexual encounter in Alabama when she was 14 and Moore was 32. The Post also relayed accusations from three other women who said that Moore dated them in their teens.
Moore denied the allegations in a statement to the Post, calling them a “desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign.”
