It is the only serious charge against him. The "dating" allegations is socially icky to some, but the molestation accusation is criminal.
It was the lumping together of the serious claim and then the assertion that the other six women were also "accusers" that lent credibility to the one serious accusation.
He thought he was helping him set the record straight, and here he is seemingly confirming the allegations.
The Dating allegations, that had been inextricably linked to the "molesting a child" allegations. Hannity should have focused only on the molestation accusation, not the dating teenagers issue. Different time and different Demographic than Hannity's New York.
The dating of teenagers was a big nothing, but the linking of that to the accusation of child molesting made it appear that there was more support for the child molesting accusation than there really was.
No, it’s socially “icky” to most, and it’s hard to know what the real truth is when this guy is flopping all around like a fish on the deck in a friendly interview with an ally.
Roy Moore really is the worst kind of politician: dishonest enough not to just tell the complete, plain truth from the jump but stupid enough to not even be able to keep an easy political lie straight in a friendly interview.
Instead of calling it fake news in his press release, he could have given your justification: it was a different time, broke no laws, came back from war and all the women his age were married, forced himself on no one, he ended up dating a teenager who became his beloved wife of x number of years, etc. He probably could have gotten himself off the hook that way. Or, he could have convincingly doubled down on his lie to Hannity in Clintonesque fashion, that it was all fake news and never courted any of these women as teenagers, etc. But, he didn’t do any of that because he has zero political acumen and managed to lose an unlosable seat.