Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore accused of pedophilia. Pretty sure he is done now. Update!

Courtesy of WaPo:

Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore. 

It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing. 

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear. 

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.

According to two of Corfman's friends they knew that she was "seeing" an older man, and one knew it was Moore, so these are not newly created allegations.

What's more Corfman is not alone:

Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact. 

Wendy Miller says she was 14 and working as a Santa’s helper at the Gadsden Mall when Moore first approached her, and 16 when he asked her on dates, which her mother forbade. Debbie Wesson Gibson says she was 17 when Moore spoke to her high school civics class and asked her out on the first of several dates that did not progress beyond kissing. Gloria Thacker Deason says she was an 18-year-old cheerleader when Moore began taking her on dates that included bottles of Mateus Rosé wine. The legal drinking age in Alabama was 19. 

There has been a tidal wave of women coming forward with decades old allegations against powerful men, and it appears that it just picked up Roy Moore's political career and dashed it on the rocks.

In fact the republicans are already starting to pull their support away from his campaign.

Courtesy of Politico:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called on the party's nominee for Senate in Alabama, Roy Moore, to withdraw from the race if a new report that he pursued teenage girls in his 30's is confirmed. 

"If these allegations are true, he must step aside." 

Other Republican senators also reacted with alarm to the report by the Washington Post. It quoted several women saying that Moore initiated contact with them when as teenagers, including one woman who said she had a sexual encounter with him when she was 14 and he was 32. 

“The allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore are deeply troubling,” added Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “If these allegations are found to be true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election.” 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was unequivocal. “I’m horrified, and if this is true he needs to step down immediately,” she told reporters. 

“It’s a nasty story, I don’t know anything about it,” added Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). Asked if Moore should withdraw, Shelby said, “Let’s see how the story runs."

There is no way this story will not run it's course before election time, and even if it did it would come down a "he said, she said" story and with the mood of the country being what it is right now "she said" carries a hell of a lot more weight.

And let's face it a lot of the Republicans in Washington did not want Roy Moore's toxic presence to infect their politics anyway, so this is more than enough reason to toss his ass to the curb.

Looks to me like the possibility of Alabama getting itself a new Democratic Senator just became a real thing.

Update: Alabama State Auditor, Jim Ziegler, comes to Roy Moore's defense: 

“Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist,” Ziegler said choosing his words carefully before invoking Christ. “Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.” 

Using the Bible to excuse sexual assault and statutory rape, yep this is Alabama alright.

Update 2: Courtesy of Think Progress:  

Moore was the only vote in favor of a day care worker who raped a 12-year-old, claiming there was no ‘implied threat of serious physical injury’. 

In 2015, while Moore was serving on the Alabama Supreme Court, he considered the case of Eric Lemont Higdon, a 17-year-old, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old at a daycare center. Higdon was found guilty under a sodomy statute that applied specifically to minors, as well another statute prohibiting rape. The second conviction was overturned by an appeals court and sent to the state supreme court for review. 

Eight justices found that the 12-year-old’s fear of harm from a much older and larger individual was enough to establish “implied threat of serious physical injury” and reinstated Higdon’s conviction. Moore was the only dissent, saying that there was “no evidence in this case of an implied threat of serious physical injury.” Moore oddly argued that the court’s interpretation opened the door to a 10-year-old being found guilty of raping an 8-year-old.

More and more of this is going to come out in the next several days.

I really do think that Moore is toast.