The women join a growing list of accusers alleging sexual misconduct by the former judge, who is seeking to fill the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions

Two more women have come forward to accuse Roy Moore of sexual assault, with one claiming the controversial Alabama Senate candidate gave her a forceful kiss that scared her when she was around 18 and another saying Moore groped her buttocks in his law office in 1991, when she was 28.

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They join a growing list of women who have alleged sexual misconduct by Moore, a former judge seeking to fill the Alabama Senate seat vacated by the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions. The controversy has roiled the Senate race one month before the state’s special election, with top Republicans in Washington calling on the embattled candidate to drop out of the race.

The scandal began when the Washington Post reported that Leigh Corfman said that when she was 14 in 1979, Moore kissed and touched her and made her touch his crotch. Beverly Young Nelson then came forward to claim Moore physically attacked her in a car when she was 16, grabbing her breasts and trying to force her head down on to his crotch.

A Washington Post report published late on Wednesday detailed the accounts of Becky Gray and Gena Richardson, who in the late 1970s worked at the same mall from which Moore was rumored to have been banned after local talk that he had been bothering young women there.

Richardson told the Post she was a senior in high school when Moore first approached her at the Gadsden Mall in the fall of 1977, just before or after her 18th birthday. Moore, then around 30 years old, asked for her phone number and the name of her school.

Richardson said when she declined to give Moore her number, he called her school days later and asked to speak with her – prompting her to be pulled from her trigonometry class to take the call from the principal’s office.

Richardson told the Post she accepted a date with Moore because she was initially flattered. But during their encounter, he drove her to an empty parking lot and tried to forcefully kiss her.

“I never wanted to see him again,” Richardson, now 58 and a community college teacher, said.

Gray, who also had not yet spoken publicly, said she was 22 and working at the mall when she was approached by Moore.

“I’d always say no, I’m dating someone, no, I’m in a relationship,” Gray, now 62, recalled.

“I thought he was old at that time. Anyone over 22 was just old.” Gray added that Moore would linger and she complained about him to her manager.

The new allegations in the Post came just hours after another new accuser told Al.com that Moore groped her behind while she was in his law office in 1991. “He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” she said.

The woman, Tina Johnson, said she was 28 at the time, in Moore’s office with her mother on legal business.

“He kept commenting on my looks, telling me how pretty I was, how nice I looked,” Johnson said. “He was saying that my eyes were beautiful.”

Johnson said Moore even asked questions about her young daughters, including if they were as pretty as she was, and grabbed her buttocks as she was leaving.

In the same piece, Kelly Harrison Thorp said Moore asked her out when she was 17, saying: “I go out with girls your age all the time.”

Moore’s campaign did not address the new allegations, but has vehemently denied the claims made by his other accusers.

On Wednesday, a defiant Moore was joined by his lawyer, Phillip Jauregui, and his campaign chairman, Bill Armistead, at a press conference in Birmingham, which sought to discredit Moore’s accusers. Jauregui specifically challenged the account of Beverly Young Nelson, a 56-year-old Alabama resident who on Monday alleged that Moore had sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old.

He also issued an open letter that said: “I adamantly deny the allegations of Leigh Corfman and Beverly Nelson, did not date underage girls, and have taken steps to begin a civil action for defamation.”

The press conference occurred as Alabama’s state Republican party gathered its steering committee for an emergency meeting on possible alternative paths forward. Party officials are reportedly weighing a write-in campaign, an approach that has also been advocated by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

On Tuesday, McConnell publicly stated his view that Sessions, who remains broadly popular in his home state, should mount a write-in campaign if he is willing to part ways with his position as attorney general. Republican leaders have even floated the possibility that they will move to expel Moore from the Senate if he wins the election despite the allegations, even as a new poll found him now trailing his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones by 12 points amid the scandal.

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Moore’s refusal to bow out of the race, despite the insistence of a growing chorus of Republican lawmakers that he do so, has escalated pressure on Donald Trump to weigh in on the matter.

But the president, who returned to Washington this week following a 12-day tour of Asia, ignored questions at the White House on Wednesday when asked by reporters if Moore should quit or if Trump believed his accusers. Trump also declined to comment on the allegations during his Asia visit, telling reporters he had been focused on his trip.

Ivanka Trump became the first White House official to condemn Moore on Wednesday, telling the Associated Press: “There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children.



“I’ve yet to see a valid explanation [from Moore] and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts,” Trump’s daughter and senior adviser said.



Ivanka did not, however, call on Moore to exit the race.