A woman who told reporters she was 14 years old when former U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore touched her sexually filed a defamation lawsuit against him Thursday, according to multiple reports.
Leigh Corfman, 53, told The Washington Post in November that Moore touched her inappropriately in 1979, while he was an assistant district attorney in Etowah County, Alabama. Moore denied the allegation and several others from women who said they were inappropriately approached by Moore while they were teenagers.
The allegations kicked of fa scandal that turned the tide of the race to fill the Senate seat left vacant when President Donald Trump chose then-Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as his attorney general. Moore lost the race last month by a narrow margin to Democrat Doug Jones.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Montgomery County Circuit Court and obtained by AL.com, Corfman accused Moore of defaming her "repeatedly and in all forms of media, calling her a liar and questioning her motivation for publicly disclosing that Mr. Moore sexually abused her in 1979 when she was a 14-year-old high school freshmen and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney."
Brett Doster, a representative of Moore's Senate campaign, told the Post, "We look forward to transparently discussing these matters in a court of law."
Corfman told the newspaper in a statement that the lawsuit aims "to do what I could not do as a 14-year-old – hold Mr. Moore and those who enable him accountable." Her attorney, Neil Roman, told the Post that Corfman is asking for a public apology from Moore and a ban to bar him or his campaign from publicly attacking her again.
The suit laid out nearly a dozen instances in which Moore denied knowing Corfman or touching her inappropriately, AL.com reported.
"Mr. Moore's denials of these facts are false and his characterizations of Ms. Corfman and her motivations are untrue,” the lawsuit said. ”Mr. Moore knew or should have known that Ms. Corfman's account is truthful because he was the perpetrator in the events she described. At a minimum, Mr. Moore was reckless in making these statements."
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