Kayla McLaughlin, left, and Gena Richardson worked together at Sears in the late 1970s. The pair is seen in this image from 1977. Richardson says Roy Moore, then in his 30s, visited her at Sears and that Moore later called her school to ask her out. (Provided by Kayla McLaughlin ) 
 
 Gena Richardson says she was a high school senior working in the men’s department of Sears at the Gadsden Mall when a man approached her and introduced himself as Roy Moore. 
 
 “He said, ‘You can just call me Roy,’ ” says Richardson, who says this first encounter happened in the fall of 1977, just before or after her 18th birthday, as Moore, then a 30-year-old local attorney, was gaining a reputation for pursuing young women at the mall in Gadsden, Ala. His overtures caused one store manager to tell new hires to “watch out for this guy,” another young woman to complain to her supervisor and Richardson to eventually hide from him when he came in Sears, the women say. 
 
 Richardson says Moore — now a candidate for U.S. Senate — asked her where she went to school, and then for her phone number, which she says she declined to give, telling him that her father, a Southern Baptist preacher, would never approve. 
 
 A few days later, she says, she was in trigonometry class at Gadsden High when she was summoned to the principal’s office over the intercom in her classroom. She had a phone call. 
 
 “I said ‘Hello?’” Richardson recalls. “And the male on the other line said, ‘Gena, this is Roy Moore.’ I was like, ‘What?!’ He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m in trig class.’ ” 
 
 Richardson says Moore asked her out again on the call. A few days later, after he asked her out at Sears, she relented and agreed, feeling both nervous and flattered. They met that night at a movie theater in the mall after she got off work, a date that ended with Moore driving her to her car in a dark parking lot behind Sears and giving her what she called an unwanted, “forceful” kiss that left her scared. 
 
 “I never wanted to see him again,” says Richardson, who is now 58 and a community college teacher living in Birmingham. She describes herself as a moderate Republican and says she didn’t vote in the 2016 general election or in this year’s Republican Senate primary in Alabama. 
 
 Moore’s campaign did not directly address the new allegations. In a statement, a campaign spokesman cast the growing number of allegations against Moore as politically motivated. 
 
 “If you are a liberal and hate Judge Moore, apparently he groped you,” the statement said. “If you are a conservative and love Judge Moore, you know these allegations are a political farce.” 
 
 Richardson, whose account was corroborated by classmate and Sears co-worker Kayla McLaughlin, is among four women who say Moore pursued them when they were teenagers or young women working at the mall — from Sears at one end to the Pizitz department store at the other. Richardson and Becky Gray, the woman who complained to her manager, have not previously spoken publicly. The accounts of the other two women — Wendy Miller and Gloria Thacker Deason — have previously been reported by The Washington Post. 
 
 Phyllis Smith, who was 18 when she began working at Brooks, a clothing store geared toward young women, said teenage girls counseled each other to “just make yourself scarce when Roy’s in here, he’s just here to bother you, don’t pay attention to him and he’ll go away.’ ” 
 
 Phyllis Smith worked at a mall store called Brooks, a clothing store geared toward young women. She said young co-workers told each other to “just make yourself scarce when Roy’s in here, he’s just here to bother you, don’t pay attention to him and he’ll go away." (Provided by Phyllis Smith) 
 
 **** 
 
 The encounters described by the women occurred between 1977 and 1982, when Moore was single, in his early 30s and an attorney in Etowah County in northeastern Alabama. In October 1977, he was appointed deputy district attorney. 
 
 In all, The Post spoke to a dozen people who worked at the mall or hung out there as teenagers during the late ’70s and early ’80s and recall Moore as a frequent presence — a well-dressed man walking around alone, leaning on counters, spending enough time in the stores, especially on weekend nights, that some of the young women who worked there said they became uncomfortable. 
 
 Several of the women said they decided to share their accounts after reading a Post story last week in which four women said Moore pursued them as teenagers, including one who said she was 14 and Moore was 32 when he touched her sexually. 
 
 Since that story was published, another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, appearing with lawyer Gloria Allred, accused Moore of sexually assaulting her in his car when she was 16. A lawyer for Moore’s campaign held a news conference on Wednesday to dispute Nelson’s account, suggesting that a signature in her yearbook she said was Moore’s might have been forged. 
 
 Moore has denied engaging in any kind of sexual misconduct. In an interview last week with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Moore did not rule out that he may have dated teenage girls when he was in his 30s, though he said he could not recall. Moore said he doesn’t remember “ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother.” 
 
 Moore has brushed off mounting calls from Republican leaders in Washington to end his campaign, saying the media and the GOP establishment are aligned against him. The reaction in Alabama, among voters and elected officials, has been more mixed. 
 
 Republican senators on Nov. 14 continued to urge Senate candidate Roy Moore to end his campaign in Alabama amid allegations of sexual misconduct. (Jordan Frasier,Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) 
 
 President Trump has not gone as far as other Republican leaders, saying through press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that Moore should drop out if the allegations are true. Trump ignored questions Wednesday from reporters asking if Moore should quit the race. 
 
 **** 
 
 The sprawling Gadsden Mall opened in 1974 with a Sears at one end, a Pizitz department store at the other, a movie theater in the middle and plenty of parking all around. It quickly became a social hub for teenagers. 
 
 By 1977, Moore had returned home from law school after attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and serving in Vietnam. It was around that time, people say, that he became a regular at the mall. 
 
 “It would always be on Friday or Saturday night,” says Becky Gray, who was then 22 and working in the men’s department of Pizitz. “Parents would drop kids off, let them roam the mall. Well, he started coming up to me.” 
 
 She says Moore kept asking her out and she kept saying no. 
 
 “I’d always say no, I’m dating someone, no, I’m in a relationship,” says Gray, now 62, a retired teacher and a Democrat who supports Moore’s opponent in the Senate race. “I thought he was old at that time. Anyone over 22 was just old.” 
 
 Gray says he was persistent in a way that made her uncomfortable. She says he lingered in her section, or else by the bathroom area, and that she became so disturbed that she complained to the Pizitz manager, Maynard von Spiegelfeld. Gray says he told her that it was “not the first time he had a complaint about him hanging out at the mall.” Von Spiegelfeld has since died, according to a relative. 
 
 Pizitz is also where Deason told The Post last week that Moore asked her out when she was 18 and working behind the jewelry counter. 
 
 Beyond Pizitz was a long corridor of shops, including Brooks, which sold rabbit fur coats and fashions geared toward young women. Smith, the one-time Brooks employee, says she was probably 19 when Moore began coming into the store, which she says employed many teenage girls. She remembers him being alone and had the strong impression he wasn’t looking to shop. 
 
 “I can remember him walking in and the whole mood would change with us girls,” says Smith, 59, who lives in Gadsden and says she is a Democrat. “It would be like we were on guard. I would find something else to do. I remember being creeped out.” 
 
 Smith says Moore never approached her personally, but she saw him chatting with other young clerks, and that she would tell new hires to “watch out for this guy.” She says that occasionally, one of the store managers would have to deal with bounced checks, which meant going to the district attorney’s office where Moore worked. She says the managers would “draw straws” to decide who had to go talk to him about the cases. 
 
 “It was just sort of a dreadful experience,” she says. 
 
 At the center of the mall was a photo booth, where Wendy Miller earlier told The Post her mother worked. Miller said she hung out there with her mom when she was 16 and that Moore repeatedly asked her out on dates, which her mother forbade. Miller’s mother, Martha Brackett, confirmed her account. 
 
 **** 
 
 At the other end of the mall was Sears, where Richardson says she was among a clique of Gadsden High girls who worked at the store during their senior year. 
 
 Richardson, whose maiden name is Burgess, was assigned to the men’s section, and her friend and classmate McLaughlin worked at the cosmetics and jewelry counter at the front of the store with a view down the long mall corridor. 
 
 “I could see when he came in,” says McLaughlin, whose maiden name was Shirley and who says that she and Richardson usually worked evening shifts on the weekends. “He didn’t really talk to me, he was over there visiting with Gena a lot. And that got to be a pattern.” 
 
 McLaughlin says she told her friend to stay away from Moore. “I hate to say this, but Gena was like my little sister. She was raised by a Southern Baptist preacher and a little naive. So I’d let her know: ‘Here he comes.’ ” 
 
 When Richardson met Moore she says he introduced himself as an attorney, and says she found it odd that he asked her to call him “Roy.” 
 
 “That was strange in the first place, because of the way we were always taught to call someone Mr. or Mrs.,” she says. 
 
 When he asked for her number, she says that she told him, “No, my dad is so strict. Mm-mm. No.” She and McLaughlin both say they talked about Moore after that, with McLaughlin telling her friend, “You can’t go out with him. He’s old.” 
 
 It was a few days later, Richardson says, when she was called out of her trigonometry class. 
 
 Richardson says she was startled, thinking maybe her dad was calling, and that when she realized it was Moore, “I felt like every person in that office was staring at me.” 
 
 “At that point, he said, ‘Would you like to go out some time?’ ” recalls Richardson, who says she described the call right afterward to McLaughlin, who confirmed the account. “I said, ‘Well, I can’t talk right now.’ And being so naive, and so not worldly, I said, ‘I’ll be at work Friday or Saturday.’” 
 
 The next Friday or Saturday night, she says, he came in to Sears and asked her out again and she again told him, “Look, my dad is so strict.” 
 
 She recalls Moore suggesting that they meet for a late movie after she got off work. She says she called her parents and told them she was going out with friends. 
 
 Instead, she says she met Moore at the movie theater. She says she can’t remember what they saw, but she remembers clearly what happened after. She says it was cold and Moore offered to drive her to her car, which was more than a football field’s distance away in a parking area behind Sears. She says he parked by her car and began chatting with her, and she says she told him again about her dad. 
 
 “I just explained to him that my dad’s a minister, and you know, I just can’t sneak around because that’s wrong,” she recalls. “So I thanked him and started to get out and he grabbed me and pulled me in and that’s when he kissed me. 
 
 “It was a man kiss — like really deep tongue. Like very forceful tongue. It was a surprise. I’d never been kissed like that,” she says. “And the minute that happened, I got scared then. I really did. Something came over me that scared me. And so I said, ‘I’ve got to go, because my curfew is now.’ ” 
 
 She says she got out of the car and into her own. 
 
 Richardson and McLaughlin say they talked about it afterward, and when Moore came into Sears after that, McLaughlin would warn her friend so she could hide in the back of the store. “I would call and say he’s coming this way,” McLaughlin says. “She would go to the back. She was uncomfortable.” 
 
 Richardson says she never spoke to Moore again. She says she first told her father about the incident on Wednesday. She says she never told her mother, who is deceased. 
 
 “All these years, I thought that was an isolated incident,” Richardson says. “Now, as a mother and a grandmother, it just makes me physically sick. I realize that it didn’t just happen to me.” ||||| New twists and turns emerged in the Alabama Senate race Wednesday as an attorney for Roy Moore questioned the motives of one accuser, the state Republican Party huddled to discuss its support of Moore and three more females surfaced to allege past sexual misconduct. 
 
 Speaking to reporters in Birmingham on Wednesday, attorney Phillip L. Jauregui demanded that a handwriting expert be allowed to review the yearbook that accuser Beverly Young Nelson held up as evidence that Moore sought a sexual relationship with her when she was 16. 
 
 “Release the yearbook so that we can determine is it genuine, or is it a fraud,” Jauregui said outside the Alabama Republican Party headquarters. 
 
 Meanwhile, three more women acccused Moore of inappropriate behavior. Tina Johnson of Gadsden claimed in a story published Wednesday afternoon by an Alabama news outlet that Moore groped her buttocks in 1991. 
 
 "He didn't pinch it; he grabbed it," Johnson told AL.com, the website for the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and the Mobile Press-Register. 
 
 Late Wednesday, the Washington Post published accounts by two more women who claimed Moore accosted them in the late-1970s, when Moore was an assistant district attorney in his early 30s. 
 
 One of the women, Gena Richardson, told the Post that when she refused to give Moore her phone number, he called her high school to ask her out on a date. She eventually agreed to go out with Moore and said he ended the date by giving her a "forceful" kiss. 
 
 The other woman, then-22-year-old Becky Gray, said that Moore repeatedly asked her out and lingered near her in a way that made her uncomfortable. When she complained to her manager, she was told it was "not the first time he had a complaint about [Moore] hanging out at the mall." 
 
 Also Wednesday night, the Alabama Republican Party’s steering committee held a meeting to discuss its next steps amid the growing scandal. 
 
 One Alabama Republican source said it was likely the committee would issue “a statement of support” for Moore and would not abandon his candidacy, even as senior Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby said he would not vote for Moore anymore. 
 
 The Moore campaign didn’t immediately comment on the latest allegation. But the candidate has adamantly denied the other accusations, calling them a “desperate political attack.” 
 
 During Wednesday’s press conference, Moore’s attorney suggested Nelson may have an ax to grind with Moore. The campaign distributed documents to reporters indicating Moore was the judge in her 1999 divorce case in Etowah County. 
 
 Nelson, appearing with celebrity attorney Gloria Allred during a Monday press conference, accused Moore of sexual misconduct while she was 16 and working at a restaurant in the 1970s. 
 
 Last week, the Washington Post reported that he pursued relationships with four teenage women dating back to the 1970s when he was in his early thirties and single. One woman told the paper she was 14 when the 32-year-old Moore asked her out and made sexual advances. 
 
 “When these allegations came out within the last week it was incredibly, incredibly, painful for him, his wife, his mom, his daughter, his grandchildren,” Jauregui said. 
 
 An avalanche of national Republicans have called on Moore to drop out of the race in recent days. 
 
 Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have explored options for removing Moore as the Republican nominee. 
 
 But after a speech on his recent trip to Asia, President Trump didn’t respond to shouted questions Wednesday from a reporter about whether he thinks Moore should step down. 
 
 REPUBLICANS READY FOR THE PRESIDENT TO INTERVENE IN ROY MOORE CONTROVERSY 
 
 Also Wednesday, Fox News' Sean Hannity did not ask Moore to quit the race after giving the Republican 24 hours to sufficiently explain himself at the close of Tuesday's broadcast. 
 
 "The people of Alabama deserve to have a fair choice, especially in light of the new allegations tonight," Hannity said. "I am very confident that when everything comes out, they will make the best decision for their state. It shouldn't be decided by me, by people on television, by Mitch McConnell, Washington, talk show hosts [or] newspeople." 
 
 In response to Hannity's ultimatum, Moore had released an open letter to the Fox News host. 
 
 "Are we at a stage in American politics in which false allegations can overcome a public record of 40 years, stampede the media and politicians to condemn an innocent man, and potentially impact the outcome of an election of national importance?" he wrote. 
 
 Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill told Fox News' Shannon Bream on "Fox News @ Night" on Monday that the Alabama Republican Party’s steering committee could vote to “disassociate themselves from Judge Moore and his candidacy and indicate that he is no longer their nominee.” 
 
 “That has to be done in a formal way,” Merrill said Monday. “It would also indicate to us at that point in time that he would no longer be their representative, even though his name would still be on the ballot.” 
 
 A new statewide poll in Alabama, commissioned by Fox10 in Mobile, shows that despite the controversy, Moore still leads Democratic nominee Doug Jones 49 percent to 43 percent with 8 percent undecided. 
 
 But a poll conducted and released by the National Republican Senatorial Committee shows Moore trailing his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, by 12 points. The NRSC has pulled its support from the race and its chairman has called on Moore to drop out of the contest. 
 
 Some Republicans have been attempting to nudge Attorney General Jeff Sessions back into his old Senate seat. McConnell, who has also called for Moore to withdraw from the race, said Tuesday “it appears as if the only option would be a write-in.” 
 
 Floating Sessions, McConnell said the name “most often discussed may not be available, but the Alabamian who would fit that standard would be the attorney general, who is totally well-known and extremely popular in Alabama.” 
 
 But a source close to Sessions told Fox News this week the attorney general is not interested in leaving the Department of Justice to return to his old seat. 
 
 On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee dropped out of a joint fundraising agreement with Moore's campaign and pulled its field staffers out of the race. 
 
 The special election is set for Dec. 12. 
 
 Fox News' Samuel Chamberlain contributed to this report. ||||| Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore, in a statement issued Friday afternoon, said he was "blindsided" by the report Thursday in The Washington Post alleging sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl. 
 
 At the same statement the statement was issued, Moore appeared on Fox News personality Sean Hannity's radio show and said he did not even know Leigh Corfman, who made the allegations in The Post. 
 
 "It's a completely manufactured story," Moore said on the Hannity show. 
 
 Moore described himself on the Hannity show as "angry...very angry." 
 
 The Hannity interview was Moore's first since The Post broke its story on Thursday. 
 
 Click here to read AL.com's coverage of Roy Moore. 
 
 The Post said Corfman was 14 when she met Moore and had a sexual encounter with him. Moore was 32 at the time. 
 
 "I don't know Ms. Corfman from anybody. I never talked to her. I never had any contact with her. The allegation of sexual misconduct with her is completely false. I believe they are politically motivated. I believe they're trying only to stop a very successful campaign and that's what they're doing." 
 
 Later in the Hannity interview, Moore said, "If you abuse a 14-year-old, you should not be a Senate candidate. I agree with that. But I did not do that." 
 
 Moore said the details of his interaction with Corfman -- which included the judge removing her clothing, touching her over her bra and underpants and guiding her hand to touch him over his underpants -- "never happened." 
 
 "I don't even like hearing it because it never happened and they're doing this a month away (from the Dec. 12 election against Democrat Doug Jones) after 40 years in public service," Moore said. "I've run five statewide campaigns, three in the county. This has never been brought up. It has never been even mentioned. And all of a sudden, four weeks out, they're bringing it up. 
 
 "They're bringing it up because it's political, it's a direct attack on this campaign and it involves a 14-year-old girl -- which I would have never had any contact with. Not with her mother, not any courthouse, would I have done that." 
 
 Moore told Hannity that he recognized the names of two of the four women whom The Post reported as having had romantic or sexual encounters with the former Alabama Supreme Court justice. 
 
 The two that Moore said he knew were Debbie Wesson Gibson and Gloria Thacker Deason, calling them both by their maiden names. Gibson told The Post that Moore spoke to her high school civics class, which Moore said told Hannity that he did not remember. 
 
 "I seemed to remember her parents; they were friends," Moore said of Gibson. "I can't recall specifics dates because it's been 40 years but I remember her as a good girl. 
 
 "Neither of them (Gibson or Deason) have ever stated any inappropriate behavior. 
 
 "I know (Gibson) but I don't remember going out on dates. I knew her as a friend. If we did go out on dates, then we did. But I do not remember that." 
 
 Moore told Hannity that he did not buy wine for the 18-year-old Deason, then under the legal drinking of 19, "because (Etowah) County was a dry county. 
 
 "As I recall, she was 19 or older (when they dated)." 
 
 Of Deason, Moore said, "I seem to remember her as a good girl. I seem to remember that I had some sort of knowledge of her parents or her mother, in particular." 
 
 Hannity asked Moore if he remembered dating girls as young as 17 or 18 years old when he was 32. 
 
 "Not generally, no," Moore said. "If I did, you know, I'm not going to dispute anything. But I don't remember anything like that." 
 
 Moore said he didn't remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother. 
 
 In the Hannity interview, Moore repeatedly talked about the length of time since the misconduct was alleged to have taken place and why that invalidated the claims. 
 
 "It's obviout to the casual observer, something's up," Moore said. 
 
 Moore said that "we are also doing an investigation and we have some evidence of some collusion here but we're not ready to put that to the public just yet." 
 
 Later in the Hannity interview, Moore said, "There are going to come out facts, there will be facts, to show, in this situation, that this was a Democrat and maybe even the establishment Republican effort to undermine this campaign because they don't want to hear the truth in Washington and they don't want to hear the truth about God and about the Constitution." 
 
 Moore said he expected more stories from The Post before the election. 
 
 "The Washington Post has attacked my foundation, my wife (who is president of the Foundation for Moral Law) and now they are attacking me personally on a sexual matter. I don't know what's coming next but I'm sure that in the next four weeks, they are going to come out with another article. Because they've got an agenda and they are fulfilling their agenda right as we speak." 
 
 Moore said he refused to debate Jones because of their "very liberal stance on transgenderism in the military and bathrooms. They're desperate." 
 
 In his statement, Moore said, "It has been a tough 24 hours because my wife and I were blindsided by an article based on a lie supported by innuendo. It seems that in the political arena, to say something is not true is simply not good enough. 
 
 "So let me be clear. I have never provided alcohol to minors (which was alleged in The Post story) and I have never engaged in sexual misconduct. As a father of a daughter and five granddaughters, I condemn the actions of any man who engages in sexual misconduct not just against minors but against any woman." 
 
 Moore, in his statement, said he couldn't answer why the story was written. 
 
 "I know that a lot of people wonder why this story was written," Moore said. "Why would women say these things if they are not true? I can't fully answer that because as much as I have disagreed vehemently on political issues with many people over the years, I cannot understand the mentality of using such a dangerous lie to try to personally destroy someone." 
 
 The rest of Moore's statement, in full: 
 
 "As a former judge and administer of the law, I take the protection of our innocent as one of my most sacred callings. False allegations are gravely serious and will have a profound consequence on those who are truly harassed or molested. 
 
 "I strongly urge The Washington Post, and everyone involved, to tell the truth. 
 
 "That is all we can do and I trust that the people of alabama, who know my record after 40 years of public service, will vouch for my character and commitment to the rule of law." 
 
 Updated today, Nov. 11, 2017, at 4:35 p.m. with new information throughout.
– Sean Hannity gave Roy Moore a 24-hour ultimatum Tuesday—and the embattled Senate candidate responded. In an open letter to Hannity, Moore said he never dated "underage girls" and suggested that an inscription in the yearbook of Beverly Young Nelson, who says he sexually assaulted her when she was 16, was a forgery, CNN reports. Moore said he "cannot comment further" on other allegations "at the direction of counsel." At the end of his show Wednesday night, Hannity said Moore had provided the answers he asked for, but he declined to say whether he believed them, the AP reports. "The people of Alabama deserve to have a fair choice," he said. "I'm very confident that when everything comes out, they will make the best decision for their state." "It shouldn't be decided by me, by people on television, by Mitch McConnell," the Fox host said. A sixth woman came forward Wednesday to accuse Moore of groping her, followed by two more who accused him of harassing them at the Gadsden Mall in his hometown when they were in their teens and he was in his 30s. Gena Richardson tells the Washington Post that she declined to give Moore her number after he approached her while she worked at Sears, but he contacted her through her high school. She says they ended up seeing a movie together, and she was frightened when he suddenly gave her a "forceful" kiss afterward. Her friend Kayla McLaughlin backs up the account and says after the encounter, Richardson hid whenever Moore came to the store. (Locals say Moore was banned from the mall for constantly pestering young women.)