On Monday, high profile attorney Gloria Allred presented a second sexual assault accuser against Alabama Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore: Beverly Young Nelson. Nelson apparently approached Allred for representation; Allred stated that Nelson was “ready, willing and able” to testify under oath about her experiences. “She feels that it is her duty to speak out at this time, and we applaud her courage,” Allred stated.
And her allegations are shocking.
Nelson is 55 years old (she turns 56 this week), and she and her husband supported President Trump. Her account is that she began working at Old Hickory House, a restaurant off of Highway 431 in Gadsden, Alabama, when she was 15. “I worked there after school as a waitress,” she stated. She continued:
Some nights I worked until 7 p.m. and other nights until 10 p.m. Mr. Roy Moore was a regular customer. He came in almost every night and he would stay until closing time. He sat at the counter in the same seat night after night, and I remember exactly where he sat. Mr. Moore was an adult. He was much older than I was. I knew that he was the district attorney in Etowah County, I didn’t understand what that meant, but I did know that he was an important person and I always treated him with respect. He would pull the ends of my red hair … He would compliment me on my looks, and I would think nothing of it. I was accustomed to men flirting with me, because I was well developed and competed in beauty pageants. I did not attach any significance to Mr. Moore’s behavior towards me, and I did not respond to Mr. Moore’s flirtatious behavior.
According to Nelson, she received a yearbook at school, and she brought it to work on the evening of November 22, 1977; by now, she would have been 16. She says that Moore offered to write a note in her yearbook, which she accepted. “I felt flattered and I said yes,” she stated. Moore then allegedly wrote in her yearbook a flirtatious note: “To a sweeter, more beautiful girl I could not say Merry Christmas. Christmas 1977, Love, Roy Moore, Old Hickory House.”
She says that a week or two later, she was working at the restaurant and her shift ended at 10 p.m.; she expected her boyfriend to pick her up, but he was late. Moore offered to drive her home. Her account then continued, as she broke down in tears:
Mr. Moore was wearing brown hush puppies on his feet. He drove a 2-door car. I believe it was an old car, but I do not recall the model. I got into his car in the passenger seat and he began driving. I thought he would get on the highway but instead he drove to the back of the restaurant. I was not immediately alarmed as there was an exit from the back of the restaurant to the street, and he could drive there to my house without getting on the highway…He stopped the car. He stopped the car and he parked his car in between the dumpster and the back of the restaurant where there were no lights. There it was dark and it was deserted. I was alarmed and I immediately asked him what he was doing. Instead of answering my question, Mr. Moore reached over and began groping me, putting his hands on my breasts. I tried to open my car door to leave, but he reached over and locked it so I could not get out. I tried fighting him off, while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping he began squeezing my neck attempting to force my head onto his crotch. I continued to struggle. I was determined that I was not going to allow him to force me to have sex with him. I was terrified. He was also trying to pull my shirt off. I thought that he was going to rape me. I was twisting and struggling and begging him to stop. I had tears running down my face. At some point he gave up. He then looked at me and said, ‘You are a child. I am the District Attorney of Etowah County. If you tell anyone about this, no one will believe you.” He finally allowed me to open the car door and I either fell out or he pushed me out. I was on the ground as he pulled out of the parking area behind the restaurant. The passenger door was still open as he burned rubber pulling away leaving me laying there on the cold concrete in the dark.
She added that the following morning her neck was “black and blue and purple,” and out of fear, she decided to keep the incident secret. She concluded, “My husband and I supported Donald Trump for president. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the Republicans or the Democrats. It has everything to do with Mr. Moore’s sexual assault when I was a teenager…Mr. Moore attacked me when I was a child.”
Allred showed the assembled reporters the inscription in the yearbook, as well as a picture of Nelson when she was 15.
[[{“fid”:”26937″,”view_mode”:”default”,”fields”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false},”type”:”media”,”field_deltas”:{“1”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false}},”attributes”:{“class”:”media-element file-default”,”data-delta”:”1″}}]]
[[{“fid”:”26938″,”view_mode”:”default”,”fields”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false},”type”:”media”,”field_deltas”:{“2”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false}},”attributes”:{“class”:”media-element file-default”,”data-delta”:”2″}}]]
Moore claimed just before the press conference that “Allred is a sensationalist leading a witch hunt, and she is only around to create a spectacle. … Judge Moore is an innocent man and has never had any sexual misconduct with anyone.”
