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  • 2017-12-09 (xsd:date)
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  • Did One of Roy Moore's Accusers 'Forge' Yearbook Evidence Against Him? (en)
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  • In November 2017, the run-up to an election to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Alabama became one of the most contentious political issues of the year when multiple women came forward and accused the Republican candidate, a former district attorney and state judge, of sexual assault. One of those women, Beverly Young Nelson, maintained that Moore had tried to force himself upon her when he was 30 and she was just a 16-year-old high school student: Moore claimed in response that he didn't even know Nelson, but she offered a contrary piece of evidence documenting that he did — her high school yearbook, which Moore had signed below the inscription To a sweeter, more beautiful girl I could not say 'Merry Christmas' just weeks before the alleged attack: Moore's defenders, including attorney Philip Jauregui, contended that the yearbook inscription was a forgery, asserting that Moore's signature had been lifted from a court document, that the handwriting appeared inconsistent in style, and that Moore would not have written D.A. after his name since he was only an assistant district attorney at the time: About three weeks later, Nelson admitted to a Good Morning America reporter that she herself had added the wording below Moore's name in order to remind herself [of] who Roy Moore was, and where and when Mr. Moore signed her yearbook. Critics immediately seized upon the admission and maintained that Nelson had lied, that she had tampered with Moore's signature, and even that she had admitted she forged the yearbook: Although some misunderstanding or misrepresentation certainly surrounded Nelson's claims, the language with which they were commonly characterized in right-wing news reports was itself hyperbolic and inaccurate. Nelson didn't lie about the annotations (she hadn't claimed that Moore had written them himself, although neither had she previously explained that he hadn't), she didn't tamper with Moore's signature (other than possibly appending the abbreviation D.A. to it), and she didn't forge (i.e., fraudulently create) any portion of the yearbook or its contents. Fox News, at least, corrected their account to note that Nelson had acknowledged adding notes to the yearbook rather than forging Moore's inscription, as Fox had originally reported: At a subsequent news conference, Nelson's lawyer, Gloria Allred, released the findings of a handwriting analyst who concluded that the signature on the yearbook inscription did indeed belong to Roy Moore. (en)
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