GADSDEN,
Ala. — Delores Abney, 63, a retired domestic violence counselor, said
she and her husband had heard things about Roy Moore and his interest in
younger women for years.
On
Monday night, Ms. Abney said she recalled Mr. Moore, the embattled
Republican Senate candidate, being a regular presence in the mid-1980s
at the Y.M.C.A. There, she said, he was often talking to much younger
women — women that “appeared to be high school on up,” she said — in an
exercise class she was enrolled in. “I’m not saying he was trying to
pick them up. It just did not look appropriate.”
“I
truly believe these women,” Ms. Abney added of the women who have come
forward to accuse him of misconduct in recent days. “This type of
behavior is highly unacceptable and deplorable in our leaders.”
But
the Abneys are also Democrats and longtime critics of Mr. Moore and his
hard-line take on Christian values. The emergence on Monday of a new
accuser, who said Mr. Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16, only
cemented their views of him. Etowah County, the largely rural slice of
northeast Alabama where Mr. Moore was raised and currently lives, was
bitterly divided about Mr. Moore before the allegations. And it remains
so now.
Rumors
that once simmered at a low level of his interest in young women, which
was mostly deemed moderately creepy rather than criminal, are now
clogging Facebook feeds, dominating talk at fast-food restaurants and
generating endless gossip.
Continue reading the main story
Mr.
Moore, many people say, clearly had a fondness for younger women in
decades past. When he got married to his wife, Kayla, in 1985, he was 38
and she was 24. But around Gadsden, a city of 36,000 in the foothills
along the Coosa River, opinions about the recent allegations tend to
follow lines that were etched long before.
“I
simply cannot believe it,” said Albert Morgan, 92, a retired pastor who
was sitting down to a meal of chicken and potatoes to celebrate his
daughter’s birthday. “He went to West Point, and then he was in the
Vietnam War. He’s very intelligent. I’ve always admired and respected
him.”
Mr. Morgan’s daughter, Sheila Christian, who had just turned 68, said she was deeply suspicious of the accusers.
“Let’s
look at these people’s past,” Ms. Christian, who works in a doctor’s
office, said. “Roy Moore — if he did it, that’s between him and God.”
Gadsden
has a long blue-collar history, sustained for most of the last century
by textile mills, a steel mill — now closed — and a tire-manufacturing
plant. It is also a city of churchgoers.
But
it is not a well of unfettered support for Mr. Moore. In a runoff for
the Republican Senate nomination in September, Mr. Moore won 57 percent
of the vote in the county — less than he earned in 42 of Alabama’s other
66 counties. It is easier to find signs for his Democratic opponent,
Doug Jones, than for Mr. Moore.
But
even in a place that has long been polarized over Mr. Moore, there are
hints of nagging doubt among his supporters, and admissions by critics
that they still want more clarity about the allegations.
On Thursday, The Washington Post reported
that a woman said Mr. Moore had a sexual encounter with her in 1979,
when she was 14 years old and he was 32. Three other women told the
paper that Mr. Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16
and 18. On Monday at a news conference in New York, a fifth woman,
Beverly Young Nelson, alleged that Mr. Moore violently sexually assaulted her in Etowah County when she was 16 years old.
Mr. Moore’s campaign has denied that he engaged in “any sexual misconduct with anyone.”
“I
don’t see him backing down,” said Wanda Fugatt, 48, who works at a
store along Broad Street. The timing of all this was fishy, she said,
and the accusers would have been more believable if they had come
forward six months earlier. She said she hopes that Mr. Moore wins and
she did not think he would step out of the race, as many Republican
leaders have called on him to do. Unless.
“Unless
he is sitting there completely guilty, knowing that he’s completely
guilty,” she said. “Then I say he may take himself out of the race. But
not yet. No, it ain’t time yet.”
Those who insist they are not politically aligned with Mr. Moore have their own questions about the recent allegations.
“I
think it’s a little weird that they’re coming up 40 years later and
making these accusations.” said B.J. Morris, 79, a retired professor on
her way out of a Chick-fil-A. Still, she said, “I believe it’s true.”
Kathy
Fowler, who processes tax credits and who was smoking a cigarette
outside of a pub as darkness fell on Monday night, said the newest
accuser had made her even more sure of Mr. Moore’s guilt.
“If
it was one, I might question it,” she said. “Now they’re popping up.
One did a news conference — that holds a lot of ground with me.”
Like many here, her decision about whether or not to support Mr. Moore was already made.
“He’s not going to get my vote,” she said. “But he wasn’t going to get it anyway.”
Billy
Smith, an insurance salesman, said he did not know what to do with the
information. The allegations were just allegations, he said, not proven
in a court of law.
“If
he did the crime, obviously it’s disgusting and that breaks my heart
for anyone that suffered,” he said. “The other thing is, it’s a little
suspicious at this point because it’s taken so long for things to come
out.”
Mr.
Smith, a Republican, had decided earlier that Mr. Moore was “not
intellectually sound enough” to be a senator. But he was also strongly
anti-abortion, and could not fathom voting for a Democrat. He said he
might sit the December 12 election out.
Whatever
happens in the election, stories long murmured around Gadsden are now
out and have to be reckoned with. For some here, the controversy that
comes along with that may not have been worth it.
“American
people have become a bucket of crabs,” said John Leach, 51, who was
reclining at his desk behind a warren of jewelry cases in a shop in
downtown Gadsden. “Everybody’s trying to grab each other, destroy each
other.”
“Do
I think he did it? I think something went on,” Mr. Leach continued.
Still, he said, his accusers should have come forward years ago. Or,
maybe they should have kept to themselves. Just because long-buried bad
things are true does not mean they should be unburied.
“I’m
a black guy, 51 years old,” Mr. Leach said. “What would it be like if I
started digging up racism? It would be a mess, it would keep it going
on and on. Let’s just leave the bones in the cemetery.”
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