For many older women — in Alabama and elsewhere — the allegations that Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually assaulted girls as young as 14 when he was in his 30s are familiar.

Reese and her friend, Margaret Tudor, grew up around the same time: Reese in Tennessee and Tudor in Kentucky. They meet weekly at a senior center in Huntsville to make porcelain dolls, sewing costumes and painting blue-eyed, pink-cheeked faces onto blank forms.

The two friends agreed on one thing: When they were growing up, women were “the underdog,” Reese said. “We always had to do what the men said.”