Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Alabama, was banned from a mall in the early 1980s after he repeatedly attempted to pick up teenage girls, former mall employees and local police told The New Yorker. Other locals also told AL.com that Moore was known for prowling the mall. Moore, whom five women have accused of making advances on them or molesting them when they were teenagers, allegedly had a reputation for hanging around the Gadsden Mall, in Gadsden, Alabama, in pursuit of high school-age girls. One former mall employee told The New Yorker that a security guard asked mall employees to be on the lookout for Moore, who was “banned from the mall.” Blake Usry, who was a teenager in town at the time, told AL.com Moore was known to "flirt with all the young girls," and would hang out at the mall on weekends "like the kids did." Other locals told AL.com that Moore's penchant for flirting with teens was common knowledge in town. One former waitress told AL.com that Moore made young waitresses uncomfortable by staring at them, then becoming rude if they did not "give him an opening." A police officer, one of two who spoke with The New Yorker, said that “general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates” and that Moore may not have received an official ban but was a persona non grata at the mall and had been “run off” from “a number of stores.”
Life is rarely black and white.