Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused by a woman of sexually assaulting her when she was 16, was banned from an Alabama mall in the 1980s after he targeted young girls for dates, according to a report Monday.
The former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice was a frequent visitor at Gadsden Mall and had been placed on a ban list after rumors he was targeting teen girls surfaced around the town, The New Yorker reported.
Greg Legat, a mall employee from 1981 to 1985, told the magazine the mall was "the place to be."
"There were no empty stores. And lots of kids came around. Lots of teenagers. You went there to see and be seen," Legat said.
A police officer named J.D. Thomas told mall employees to be on the lookout for Moore because he was "banned from the mall," Legat said.
"If you see Moore here, tell me. I'll take care of him," the cop reportedly told Legat.
Police officers who spoke with The New Yorker said Moore's presence at the mall was a problem.
"The general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high school dates," one of the officers said.
"I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he'd been run off from there, from a number of stores," another cop recalled. "Maybe not legally banned, but run off."
That cop also said he "heard from one girl who had to tell the manager of a store at the mall to get Moore to leave her alone."
The report comes hours after a fifth accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, alleged that Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 in the 1970s.
A week before, he had signed her high school yearbook with "Love, Roy Moore D.A.," Nelson said at a press conference in New York City on Monday.
Four women told The Washington Post that Moore targeted them for dates when they were mere teens and he was in his 30s. Moore has denied those allegations.
Several women who worked at Gadsden Mall also told the Post that Moore, who was "well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt," would often be spotted around the mall alone.
Democrats and Republicans have called for Moore to step down from the Senate race. It's unclear if Moore remains on the mall's ban list.
