One of the nine women accusing Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct doubled down Friday on her allegations, even while changing one detail of her story.
Beverly Young Nelson claims she was a 16-year-old waitress when Moore groped her and tried to force her to perform a sex act in his car.
Moore denies ever having known her but did rule against her in a divorce proceeding years later when he was a judge.
On Friday, Nelson told ‘Good Morning America’ that she still fears Moore’s potential impact in the U.S. Senate, but softened her earlier insistence that an inscription in her high school yearbook was entirely written in Moore’s hand.
She admitted adding the date and location under Moore’s signature, despite her attorney Gloria Allred’s earlier claim that the Republican candidate wrote it all.
Beverly Young Nelson claims U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore groped her in a car when she was 16 years old and he was a rising legal star, but now she concedes that she herself wrote a few lines of an entry in her high school yearbook that was previously attributed to him
Nine different women have publicly accused Moore of sexual misconduct, including two who say he groped them when they were teen girls
Nelson now says that while Moore wrote this message in her high school yearbook, she added the date at the bottom and the name of the restaurant where she claims he wrote it
She added the date ’12-22-77′ and a restaurant name – ‘Olde Hickory House’ – to the yearbook inscription, she said.
Allred has presented the yearbook page as proof that Moore, then in his 30s, sought an inappropriate relationship with Nelson at the time.
Moore is now narrowly favored to win Tuesday’s Senate special election.
He insisted last week during a campaign rally that he is completely innocent.
‘These allegations are completely false. They’re malicious. Specifically, I do not know any of these women, nor have I ever engaged in sexual misconduct with any woman,’ Moore said.
Nelson tells a different story.
‘He was trying to pull me toward – in between his legs. It was terrible. I was bound and determined that I was not going to be raped by him,’ she recalled on Friday. ‘I was terrified.’
‘It sickens me to wonder what may go on with him if he gets into office,’ she added.
‘Maybe, you know, he could be doing this still. We don’t know. And then again I hope that he’s changed. I pray that he’s changed. I really do.’
Nelson’s attorney, Gloria Allred, has cited the yearbook entry as proof that the then-30-something Moore sought an inappropriate relationship with the teenage Nelson, but she has refused to submit it for independent handwriting analysis
An ABC News reporter got Nelson to confirm on Friday that she added the date ’12-22-77′ and a restaurant name – ‘Olde Hickory House’ – to the yearbook inscription
Nelson’s yearbook includes an inscription written with ‘love’ to a ‘beautiful girl’ and is signed ‘Roy Moore D.A.’ – but Moore’s Senate campaign says those initials mean someone else wrote it
Nelson, who says she voted for Trump, worries that partisan politics has eclipsed moral judgment.
‘Is the party more important, really, than what happened?’ she asked, claiming her story is being ‘swept under the rug, literally,’ because Moore is a Republican running in a deep-red state.
The yearbook entry, however, could weaken her credibility.
Moore’s campaign has already suggested it was entirely fabricated, claiming the letters ‘D.A’ after his signature are proof someone else was responsible.
Moore was then the local assistant district attorney, not the district attorney.
His own assistant at the time, however, had the initials ‘D.A.’ and would often add them when he stamped legal documents with Moore’s signature.
One such document was a divorce decree issued in Nelson’s own case, which was decided against her – a fact that Moore supporters cite as an indication that she copied the signature and forged the rest.
Allred said Friday that she will hold a press conference later in the day to address the authenticity of Moore’s signature. She has previously declined to turn the yearbook over to a neutral third-party for handwriting analysis.