New Moore accuser says he groped her in 1991

An Alabama woman has accused Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of groping her in 1991, when he was a married man, Alabama news outlet AL.com reported on Wednesday.

Tina Johnson, who would have been 28 at the time, told the news outlet that Moore grabbed her backside as she exited his office after she signed custody paperwork. 

“He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” Johnson said.

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She said Moore repeatedly made comments about her looks and said “how pretty [she] was.” 

Johnson told AL.com that the incident occurred while she was in Moore’s law office with her mother regarding a petition for custody.

Johnson described to the news outlet feeling uncomfortable when she encountered Moore in the office, saying he sat close enough to her at one point that she could smell his breath.

She had two young daughters and said Moore at one point asked her if they were pretty like her, according to AL.com.

The news outlet confirmed that Moore signed off on the custody documents at the time, which transferred custody of Johnson’s 12-year-old son over to her mother.

Johnson is the sixth woman to accuse Moore of misconduct and the first to claim that he did so when he was a married man.

Another woman who spoke to the news outlet said Moore asked her out in 1982, when she was 17 years old. The former judge would have been in his 30s at that time.

The woman, Kelly Harrison Thorp, told AL.com that she asked Moore if he knew her age after he asked her to go out at some point.

“And he said, ‘Yeah. I go out with girls your age all the time,’ ” Thorp recalled Moore saying.

Thorp told the news outlet that women previously did not speak out about Moore’s alleged behavior out of fear people would not believe their stories. She added that no one ever asked. 

“Everybody knew it wouldn’t matter,” Thorp told AL.com. “That he would get elected anyway because his supporters are never going to believe anything bad about him.”

The accusations come after a woman who spoke to The Washington Post alleged in a story published last week that Moore inappropriately touched her in 1979, when she was 14 years old and Moore was 32. Moore has denied this allegation.

Three other women who spoke to the Post said Moore pursued them at a similar time, when they were between 16 and 18 years old.

In an interview last week, Moore admitted he may have dated women in their later teens during that period of his life, but said he did not “remember anything like that.”

Another woman earlier this week publicly accused Moore of sexual assaulting her in 1977, when she was 16, a claim that came the same day multiple Republicans called on Moore to step aside.

In a press conference Wednesday outside of the state GOP headquarters, Moore attorney Phillip Jauregui sought to discredit the accusations from the woman, Beverly Young Nelson.

Jauregui suggested a yearbook signature presented by Nelson could be a fake, and called for it to be released for a handwriting analysis. 

Despite numerous Republican senators revoking their endorsements of the former judge and calling on him to exit the race, Moore has remained defiant, insisting he will not quit.

Moore is slated to face off against Democrat Doug Jones on Dec. 12 in the special election Senate race to fill the seat currently held by Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.).

Updated: 6:20 p.m.