Leigh Corfman, who alleged earlier this month that Roy Moore sexually abused her nearly 40 years ago when she was a 14-year-old girl, said Monday that she “didn’t deserve to have a 32-year-old man prey upon” her.
In an exclusive interview with NBC’s TODAY— her first on television since she made her allegations against the embattled GOP Senate candidate in Alabama — Corfman, now 53, said she was simply a “14-year-old child playing in an adult’s world,” when Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her.
“I was expecting candlelight and roses, what I got was very different,” she said. “I felt guilty. I felt like I was the one to blame. It was decades before I was able to let that go.”
“I was a 14-year-old child trying to play in an adult’s world and he was 32 years old,” she said.
Corfman told The Washington Post earlier this month that in 1979, a 32-year-old Moore took off her “shirt and pants and removed his clothes,” touched her “over her bra and underpants” and “guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.” At least eight other women have come forward with accusations against Moore. Moore has repeatedly denied all of the allegations and said they were the product of nefarious efforts by his political opponents and the media.
Related: At Sunday services, Alabama voters mostly quiet on Moore
“I am not guilty of sexual misconduct with anyone,” Moore said earlier this month, a message his campaign has put out repeatedly.
Corfman, however, maintained Monday that the Post “sought me out,” “that she’s “voted as a Republican for years and years” and that “this isn’t political for me.”
When asked why she waited until now to come forward with the allegations, she explained that she had told people after the incident occurred — “my family knew, family friends knew,” she said — but that she wanted to protect her young children from the maelstrom she knew would follow.
“My children were small, I was a single parent,” she said, expressing a desire to shield them from the fallout.
But when the Post contacted her, she told them, that, “If they found additional people, I would tell my story.”
“I didn’t go looking for this, it fell in my lap,” she said of deciding to make her story public.
Related: How Roy Moore may flip deep-red Alabama to blue
In fact, the Post also interviewed three other women who claim Moore “pursued” them when they were 16 to 18 and when he was in his early 30s, and following Corfman’s allegations, several other women have come forward with similar allegations.
Corfman denied receiving any compensation for telling her story, saying that, “if anything, this has cost me.”
Corfman said Monday that she is “looking forward to being an advocate for people like me.”