A proud patriarchal wingnut hit on 14 year old girls? No, that can't be right.
by digby
Bowl me over with a feather. Judge Roy Moore hits on young teen-age girls. Karoli at C&L has the story:
The bombshell story just out in the Washington Post should end Roy Moore's political career forever, but it remains to be seen whether or not Alabama can cobble together a coalition of the decent to defeat the coalition of the greedy.
It reaches back to the 70s, when Moore was 32 and Leigh Corfman was 14. Yes. FOURTEEN YEARS OLD.
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.
It wasn't just Corfman, either. There are four different women all willing to put their stories and names on the record about Moore's predilection for young girls.
Under Alabama law then and now, this conduct is not legal, as the Post notes:
The legal age of consent in Alabama, then and now, is 16. Under Alabama law in 1979, and today, a person who is at least 19 years old who has sexual contact with someone between 12 and 16 years old has committed sexual abuse in the second degree. Sexual contact is defined as touching of sexual or intimate parts. The crime is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.The law then and now also includes a section on enticing a child younger than 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts. That is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
In interviews, Corfman said she hadn't come forward because she had her own sordid past, which is typical of a culture where men are allowed to take whatever they want whenever they want while blaming women for taking it. It's sad that she lived with this all these years and never said anything before because she didn't want her life torn apart. Understandable, but sad.
Bannon and Breitbart are already ahead of the story, justifying their guy's sexual predatory behavior, while sneering "smear!" at the Washington Post.
Four women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant said Donald Trump walked into the dressing room while contestants — some as young as 15 — were changing.
"I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’ " said Mariah Billado, the former Miss Vermont Teen USA.
Trump, she recalled, said something like, "Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before."
Three other women, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting engulfed in a media firestorm, also remembered Trump entering the dressing room while girls were changing. Two of them said the girls rushed to cover their bodies, with one calling it "shocking" and "creepy." The third said she was clothed and introduced herself to Trump.
The story also reported:
Of the 11 (contestants) who said they don’t remember Trump coming into the changing room, some said it was possible that it happened while they weren’t in the room or that they didn’t notice. But most were dubious or dismissed the possibility out of hand.
Allison Bowman, former Miss Wisconsin Teen USA, cast doubt on whether it happened. "These were teenage girls," Bowman said. "If anything inappropriate had gone on, the gossip would have flown."
But there was also this:
Billado said she told Ivanka Trump (Trump’s daughter), about Donald Trump entering the room while the girls were changing their clothes. Billado remembers Ivanka answering, "Yeah, he does that."
Trump’s words
Three days before Kind made his statement, CNN reported on comments Trump has made about women to radio talk show host Howard Stern over the years. In a 2005 interview, Trump talked about walking in on naked contestants -- but that was in response to a discussion about the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, whose contestants are adults. Trump said:
Well, I'll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. You know, I'm inspecting, I want to make sure that everything is good.
You know, the dresses. ‘Is everyone okay?’ You know, they're standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I've been very good.
Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to our requests for this item, but his campaign did issue this statement in response to the BuzzFeed story:
"These accusations have no merit and have already been disproven by many other individuals who were present. When you see questionable attacks like this magically put out there in the final month of a presidential campaign, you have to ask yourself what the political motivations are and why the media is pushing it."
There is not evidence, however, that the accusations have been disproved -- only that some of the contestants said they were not aware of the alleged incident, and some believed it could not have happened.
"It was 40 years ago," Alabama Marion County GOP chair David Hall tells me. "I really don't see the relevance of it. He was 32. She was supposedly 14. She's not saying that anything happened other than they kissed."
Me: "The story said she said he tried to get her to touch his genitals." Hall: "Well, she said he may have TRIED to. But we're talking something that somebody SAID happened, 40 years ago. It wouldn't affect whether or not I'd vote for him."
More Hall: “The other women that they’re using to corrobrate: number one, one was 19, one was 17, one was 16. There’s nothing wrong with a 30-year-old single male asking a 19-year-old, a 17-year-old, or a 16-year-old out on a date."
After a long pause, Alabama Bibb County Republican chairman Jerry Pow tells me he'd vote for Roy Moore even if Moore did commit a sex crime against a girl.
"I would vote for Judge Moore because I wouldn't want to vote for Doug," he says. "I'm not saying I support what he did."
“I really can’t comment until I have a chance to digest it," says Tallapoosa County GOP chairwoman Denise Bates. “Nothing to say," says Marengo County chairman Robert Duke.
Alabama Mobile County GOP chairman John Skipper: "It does not really surprise me. I think it is a typical Democratic - Democrat - ploy to discredit Judge Moore, a sincere, honest, trustworthy individual."
"These allegations that surfaced today - to my knowledge, they're all bunk. No credibility whatsoever," Mobile County Republican chairman John Skipper tells me.
If these allegations against Moore were true, Mitch McConnell's anti-Moore allies would have obviously found them and released them during the primary, Mobile County Republican chairman John Skipper tells me.