On 12 November 2017, Kayla Moore, the wife of embattled Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore, posted a letter to her Facebook page purporting to show support from 50 pastors after five women came forward with allegations her husband either molested them, attempted to rape them, or came on to them sexually when they were between the ages of 14 and 18 years old.
According to news reports, at least four pastors whose names appear on the letter said that they did not grant permission for their names to be used in light of sexual abuse allegations. The letter first appeared on Moore's campaign page ahead of the 15 August 2017 primary in which Moore and his fellow Republican Luther Strange were advanced to a September runoff, which Moore won.
It reads, in part:
From the pulpit to hospital rooms, from wedding altars to the funeral home, from the Capitol to our prisons, we are called to serve Jesus Christ in every area of life. With our calling comes a responsibility to address such compelling cultural issues as the special election for United States Senate. We have the opportunity this Tuesday, August 15, to send a man to Washington who shares our convictions, will fight for morality, and will restore integrity in the halls of Congress. That man is Judge Roy Moore.
...
You can know a man by his enemies, and he’s made plenty – from the radical organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU to the liberal media and a handful of establishment politicians from Washington. He has friends too, a lot of them. They live all across this great State, work hard all week, and fill our pews on Sunday. They know him as a father, a grandfather, a man who loves God’s Word and knows much of it by heart, a man who cares for the people, a man who understands our Constitution in the tradition of our Founding Fathers, and a man who deeply loves America. It’s no wonder the Washington establishment has declared all-out war on his campaign.
Kayla Moore apparently chopped off the first three paragraphs of the letter before re-sharing it online, but left all the signatories in place, to the chagrin of Tijuanna Adetunji, Joseph Smith, Thad Endicott and George Grant, all of whom said they didn't want their names on the letter, according to AL.com which first reported the story. We reached out to all four pastors and have not heard back. We also reached out to Kayla Moore and the Foundation for Moral Law, a legal nonprofit she leads, and got no response.
The pastors are among a number of conservatives who have removed their support from Moore after the Washington Post broke a story on 9 November 2017 in which multiple women went on the record to say Moore had made sexual advances toward them when they were teenagers. One of the women, Leigh Corfman, said she was 14 when Moore took her to his house, undressed her and molested her. On 13 November 2017, a fifth woman, Beverly Young Nelson, came forward to say that Moore assaulted and attempted to rape her when she was 16.