The woman who accused former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of initiating a sexual encounter with her when she was 14 and he was in his 30s is suing him for defamation.
Leigh Corfman has filed the suit in state court in Montgomery, Ala. She is not seeking financial damages beyond legal costs, but instead is asking for a public apology from Moore and a ban on him or his campaign publicly attacking her in the future, The Washington Post reported.
Moore lost to now-Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) last month in the special election to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s old seat. Jones was sworn in on Wednesday.
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The Washington Post first published Corfman’s account in November, about a month before the special election. The newspaper also spoke with two other women who said Moore made advances toward them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.
In the following weeks, multiple other women came forward to accuse Moore of sexual misconduct, including one woman who alleged Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16.
Moore repeatedly denied the allegations, calling them a conspiracy by establishment Republicans and the media to get him to drop out of the race. He also denied knowing Corfman, saying, “I never talked to her, never had any contact with her.”
His supporters and campaign representatives said in interviews that they did not believe the women and called them liars.
Moore has still not conceded following his Dec. 12 electoral loss. He filed a court complaint in an attempt to stop the results from being certified, but a court rejected Moore’s protest and declared Jones the winner.
In his filing, Moore said he took a polygraph test after the election to confirm that the allegations against him were false.