Was Moore banned from a local mall due to his inappropriate activities?

[basquebromance]

If I were Doug Jones, I would spend the rest of my campaign standing in area malls with a sign that says "Because I'm allowed to be here."

 

[tinydancer]

Roy Moore, now a Republican Senate candidate, was known for “badgering teenage girls” at an Alabama mall in the 1980s, The New Yorker reports.

Reporter Charles Bethea spoke with over a dozen people who worked or spent time at the Gadsden Mall during that time. They said there were many rumors that Moore was on a list of people banned from the establishment.

Greg Legat, who worked at the mall in the 1980s, told Bethea that he remembers Moore was banned from the shopping center starting around 1979. Legat recalled that the mall was often “filled” with unchaperoned teens.

A local police officer, J.D. Thomas, reportedly often asked Legat to keep an eye out for Moore. ”‘If you see Moore here, tell me. I’ll take care of him,’” Legat remembers Thomas telling him, according to The New Yorker.

Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson reported Sunday that he had heard similar allegations: “Sources tell me Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall and the YMCA for his inappropriate behavior of soliciting sex from young girls.”

Other people who frequented the mall during the 1980s told The New Yorker they believed Moore had been banned for “trying to pick up younger girls.”


Two police officers who worked in the area at the time also told Bethea that Moore was known for hanging around the mall to find dates.

“The general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates,” one officer said. “I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he’d been run off from there, from a number of stores. Maybe not legally banned, but run off.”

Roy Moore May Have Been Banned From A Mall For Harassing Teen Girls In 1980s | HuffPost

Usually when I read about these sex scandals--especially from decades ago, I'm skeptical to believe any of them. I didn't believe all this stuff about Moore either because again, no evidence to support the case of the women making the accusations.

If this report has any validity, I think I will change my mind on this. If there are records showing Moore was banned from the mall due to the activities he's now being accused of, it's an open and shut case as far as I'm concerned.

I realize there are dozens of posts about Moore, but this is a game changer which is why I posted it.

Statements by self proclaimed victims are evidence. Since there has been nothing exculpatory to refute these statements - which legally are a form of direct evidence, you are offering an opinion defending someone you don't know and question - at best - the evidence and their integrity.

No mob of people on the left are yelling "lock him up", the calls for his rejection by his fellow Republicans ought to give a right winger like Ray a moments pause.

Statements that are unsubstaniated by any other evidence are worth about as much as the testimony in the Salem witch trials. It's exactly the same kind of evidence, as a matter of fact.

Statements that are independently verified by multiple sources have credibility

And the names of those verifying statements are anonymous? Are you freaking kidding me?

 

[tinydancer]

Now we are talking small town here and he's the Deputy District Attorney. There wasn't a mall ban or a YMCA ban, but if there was Moore would have been fired outright. No ifs ands or buts. Judge Moore would have been fired on the spot.

AND it would have been front page news if he had been banned from the mall and the YMCA as gossiped about.

 

[paperview]

50,000+ people isn't a "small town" and teen-y-brain makes absurdities.

Ina Alabammy they don't stand for such things!

What a riot.

 

[paperview]

It's just part of the way of life for a great many in evangelical circles.

Roy Moore's alleged pursuit of a young girl is the symptom of a larger problem in evangelical circles

"We need to talk about the segment of American culture that probably doesn't think the allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore are particularly damning, the segment that will blanch at only two accusations in the Washington Post expose: He pursued a 14-year-old-girl without first getting her parents' permission, and he initiated sexual contact outside of marriage. That segment is evangelicalism. In that world, which Moore travels in and I grew up in, 14-year-old girls courting adult men isn't uncommon.

I use the phrase "14-year-old girls courting adult men," rather than "adult men courting 14-year-old girls," for a reason: Evangelicals routinely frame these relationships in those terms...

<snip>
Much of the sexual abuse that takes place in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, or IFB, churches involves adult men targeting 14- to 16-year-old girls. If caught, the teenage victim may be forced to repent the “sin” of having seduced an adult man. Former IFB megachurch pastor Jack Schaap argued that he should be released from prison after being convicted of molesting a 16-year-old girl, asserting that the “aggressiveness” of his victim “inhibited [his] impulse control.” In the wake of the Schaap case, numerous other stories emerged of sexual abuse cover-ups involving teenage girls at IFB churches.

In another high-profile case, pregnant 15-year-old Tina Anderson, who was raped by a church deacon twice her age, was forced to confess her “sin” to the congregation.

Prominent conservative Reformed theologian Doug Wilson has a documented history of mishandling sexual abuse cases within his congregation. Nevertheless, he continues to be promoted by evangelical leaders such as John Piper, whose Desiring God site still publishes Wilson’s work.

When a 13-year-old girl in Wilson’s congregation was sexually abused, Wilson argued that she and her abuser were in a parent-sanctioned courtship, and that this was a mitigating factor.

There’s no shortage of such stories. A Presbyterian Church in America, or PCA, pastor attempted to discipline a woman who warned home-school parents of the convicted sex offender in his congregation. (The sex offender had gone online to solicit a 14-year-old girl for sex.) Another PCA church allowed that same convicted sex offender to give the invocation at a home-school graduation ceremony. He wasn’t perceived as an attempted child rapist"

Roy Moore's alleged pursuit of a young girl is the symptom of a larger problem in evangelical circles