A southern pastor has said he still supports Roy Moore, the Senate candidate accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, because "more women are sexual predators than men”.
Pastor Franklin Raddish of the Capitol Hill Independent Baptist Ministries claimed that recent allegations against Mr Moore, and other prominent men in Washington and Hollywood, were part of a “war on men”.
"More women are sexual predators than men," Mr Raddish told AL.com. "Women are chasing young boys up and down the road, but we don't hear about that because it's not PC."
According to US Department of Justice statistics, 91 per cent of the victims of rape and sexual assault are female. Nine per cent are male.
Mr Raddish is one of approximately 50 pastors who signed on to a letter supporting Mr Moore's campaign for a US Senate seat in Alabama this August. In the months following, five women came forward to accuse Mr Moore of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was in his thirties. One woman claims he initiated sexual contact when she was only 14 – under the age of consent in Alabama.
Mr Moore has denied these allegations as politically motivated, in one case claiming he did not even know his accuser at the time of the alleged assault.
AL.com recently reached out to all of the pastors who signed onto the letter of support in August, to see if they continued to back Mr Moore. Of the 29 churches that responded, 19 confirmed that the pastor was still supporting the candidate.
Pastor David Gonnella, of the Magnolia Springs Baptist Church, previously called the Republican Party a “bunch of sissies” for asking Mr Moore to step aside.
"I don't desert my friends just on mere accusations, I require evidence," he told Fox News 10. Mr Gonnella suggested the allegations were “perhaps satanically motivated,” and questioned why the accusers took decades to come forward.
Many Republicans in Washington, however, have called on Mr Moore to bow out of the race. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, current Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, and more than a dozen other Republican members of Congress have called on the candidate to step down in advance of the 12 December election. The Republican National Committee has pulled its funding from his campaign.
Mr Moore, however, shows no signs of ending his run.
“This is an effort by Mitch McConnell and his cronies to steal this election from the people of Alabama and they will not stand for it!” the former judge tweeted last week. “I'm gonna tell you who needs to step down, that's Mitch McConnell.”
