The small city of Gadsden, Alabama, just an hour northeast of Birmingham, is the conservative hometown of Roy Moore, as well as his now worst kept secret. According to AL.com, Gadsden locals have known about Moore’s predatory behavior for years.
Lifelong Gadsden resident and traveling nurse Blake Usry gold AL.com, “These stories have been going around this town for 30 years.” Usry knew several girls that Moore had made advances on, he said, “Nobody could believe they hadn’t come out yet.”
Those who knew Moore say he often spent his time walking alone through the Gadsden Mall, a popular hangout for teenagers.
In 1977, Wendy Miller was 14, she tells The Washington Post, working as Santa’s helper at the Gadsden Mall. It was then that Moore first spoke with her and called her pretty. By the time she was 16, things had escalated to him asking her on dates, which her mother had disallowed.
Greg Legat told AL.com that when he worked at the mall in the ‘80s, an off-duty police officer named J.D. Thomas told him to keep an eye out for Moore. According to Legat, Thomas said Moore was banned from the mall but did not specify a reason. Thomas would not discuss Moore when reached by phone by multiple news outlets & publications.
Jason Nelms, a teenage Gadsden Mall regular in the ‘80s, said that he and other workers were instructed to “keep an eye out” for an older man who tried to pick up girls at the mall. Nelms told AL.com that he later found out the man was Moore.
On Monday, Beverly Young Nelson became the fifth accuser to come out against Moore. She said she was 16 years old, waitressing at the Old Hickory House, when Moore sexually assaulted her in his car.
Another former waitress, Victoria Beverstock, told AL.com that in 1992, she when she was 20 years old, she was working at the The Poor House restaurant, when Moore came in a regularly to eat and do paperwork. Beverstock says he would uncomfortably stare and flirt with her and the other waitresses. “He watched us girls quite openly,” she said in the interview with AL.com. “His eyes crawled over our shirts and our backsides. He was so open about it that I would try and handle his order as quickly as possible,” she added, “When you didn’t smile and flirt back with him, give him an opening, he became rude and demanding,”
Since the initial report by The Post, Moore has maintained his various defenses for his pedophilia. Moore claims he has a “special concern for the protection of young ladies,” as he put it to Hannity. When The Fox News host pressed for clarification he responded, “I don’t know Ms. Corfman from anybody. I never talked to her, never had any contact with her. Allegations of sexual misconduct with her are completely false. I believe they are politically motivated. I believe they are brought only to stop a very successful campaign, and that’s what they are doing. I’ve never known this woman.”
In response to the other women cited in The Post’s story, he said he couldn’t be expected to remember every woman he’d ever dated. “After my return from the military,” he said, “I dated a lot of young ladies.”
Top photo via Facebook/Roy Moore
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