Roy Moore, prospective Republican senator, had ‘improper relations with 14yo’

Roy Moore, a Republican candidate for the US Senate, has been accused of initiating a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl. The incident allegedly took place in 1979, when he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney.

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

Corfman is one of four women who have come forward to talk to the Washington Post about claims Moore pursued relationships with them when they were aged between 14 and 18 and Moore was an adult.

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Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama supreme court, has vehemently denied the accusations, calling them “completely false and a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party”, and “the very definition of fake news”.

A number of senior Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel, have called on Moore to step aside if the allegations are true. However, some Republicans are standing by Moore.

“Take Joseph and Mary,” Alabama state auditor Jim Ziegler told the Washington Examiner. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”