One of the original four accusers of Roy Moore gave nothing short of an incredibly poised interview Monday morning on NBC, saying that "a weight's been lifted" since she came forward about Moore's sexual molestation of her when she was just 14.
"I've had huge support," Leigh Corfman told Today’s Savannah Guthrie, adding that a lot of people have told her they've been inspired by her courage to share their own stories. At age 53, Corfman reflected on what many people have described as several "dates" she went on as a teen with Roy Moore, who was then in his 30s.
"I wouldn't exactly call it a date," she clarified, explaining the first time Moore picked her up around the corner from her house. "I'd say it was a 'meet.' At 14, I was not dating. At 14, I was not able to make those kind of choices."
At the request of Guthrie, Corfman shared some of the more uncomfortable details of her interactions with Moore, including the moment when Moore laid out a blanket on the floor of his house, partially unclothed her, touched her, and attempted to get her to touch him. It wasn't what she had expected, she told Guthrie.
"I was a 14-year-old child trying to play in an adult's world, and he was 32 years old," Corfman explained. “I was expecting candlelight and roses, and what I got was very different.”
At the time, she said, she didn't think about the encounter in terms of molestation or assault: "It wasn't part of my vocabulary." But after telling several of her friends about the interactions, they discouraged her from continuing to see Moore and she stopped returning his calls. Nonetheless, she lost a certain sense of innocence after the ordeal.
“It took away a lot of the specialness of interactions with men. It took some trust away," she said, adding, "It took years for me to regain a sense of confidence in myself and I felt guilty. I felt like I was I was the one that was to blame, and it was decades before I was able to let that go."
Corfman also explained why it took her so many years to come forward with the information publicly. Though she shared the events with close friends and family, she worried about how going public with the story would affect her kids.
"My children were small,” she said, “I was a single parent, and when you're in that situation, you do everything you can to protect your own." When her children were a little older but still in school, Corfman gave them an "overview" of what took place, consulted with them about sharing it publicly, and ultimately decided not to go forward because they worried about being "castigated" in their social groups.
"We decided together that we wouldn't do it at that time," Corfman said.
But the approach from Washington Post reporters "literally fell in my lap," she said. "I had to make a decision and I told them at that time—the reporters who were all just wonderful to me—that if they found additional people, that I would tell my story." The Post found three other women who had similar experiences with Moore when they were teenagers. Since that article was published, five other women have accused Moore of pursuing them as teens and, in one case, of sexual assault.
As to Moore's denials of her allegations and of even knowing her at all, Corfman said, "I wonder how many me’s he doesn't know."