A woman who last month accused Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker of pressuring her to abort their child against her will has challenged the former football star to deny her claims in person ahead of the December runoff election.
The woman, going by “Jane Doe,” issued the challenge in a press conference Tuesday afternoon hosted by her attorney Gloria Allred. Doe said she decided to push for the in-person meeting after Walker called her initial allegations a “lie” and dismissed her as “some woman I don’t know.”
“Do you have the guts to meet with me in person in public, look me in the eye, and tell me to my face that you don’t know me and that none of what I said is true?” Doe asked Walker on Tuesday.
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“I’m looking forward to your response,” she said.
Doe, who in October alleged that Walker had driven her back to the clinic after she told him she couldn’t go through with the abortion, said his pressure campaign also included “multiple conversations in which he spoke about threats to me and the baby if I went through with the pregnancy.” Those threats, she said, included vague references to his own personal safety as well as threats of committing suicide.
“He kept saying ‘they’ would still find out and that ‘they’ could ‘have his heart’ by threatening me and the baby. He even told me he thought ‘they’ would try to take the child away from me,” she said, referring to Walker’s in-laws.
Doe, visibly overcome with emotion and fighting back tears, read aloud from one journal entry.
“Herschel has about gone off the deep end over this whole thing. He thinks that having the baby will keep him in so deep with [his wife’s] family that he’ll never get out. He talks about how it would be fine for the baby, and I, if he would just ‘disappear.’ But I know what that means,” she said. (Walker, who claims to have played Russian roulette more than half-a-dozen times, was hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning in 1991, after reportedly falling asleep in his car while it was running in his garage.)
Doe also provided what she says is further evidence of her six-year extramarital affair with Walker, including a journal entry, letters, and two pieces of audio—a recorded phone call in which both said they loved each other, and an answering machine tape where a man Allred identified as Walker says, “Ah you, this is your stud farm calling, you big sex puppy, you.”
Additionally, Allred read from a sworn statement written by a friend of Doe’s, who says that while she knew of the pregnancy at the time, Doe had first claimed she had miscarried before admitting “several years later” that it had been an abortion.
Doe first came forward in an October press conference, saying she had been inspired to speak up after Walker denied another woman’s claims to The Daily Beast that he had paid her to abort their child in 2009, and three years later urged her to have a second abortion against her will.
That woman gave birth to the child in 2012, against Walker’s wishes. While Walker had initially denied knowing who that first woman was, he eventually acknowledged her as the mother of one of his four children. He has continued to deny her claim that he paid for the abortion, despite the clinic receipt, a “get well” card, and a signed personal check from Walker the woman provided.
Walker, whose election will be decided in a Dec. 6 runoff against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), has seen his campaign hounded with accusations of domestic abuse and violent threats, including claims from his ex-wife and adult son, Christian Walker. The sports star—a self-proclaimed devout Christian and critic of absentee fathers—has also fathered at least four children by four different women, and earlier this year lied about the existence of two of those children to his own campaign staff, The Daily Beast previously reported.
After his NFL career ended, Walker was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. He claimed in his 2008 memoir to have sought healing through both therapy and devotion to Jesus Christ. The following year, he had an out-of-wedlock child with one woman, months before paying for the abortion with a separate woman.
Jane Doe has claimed that Walker frequently proclaimed his love to her over the course of their affair, which began in 1987 and ended in 1993, while Walker was married to his first wife. In addition to the audio recordings, Doe’s proof of the intimate relationship includes letters to her and her parents, which she read aloud at the press conference.
“Herschel, you wrote me a letter in the summer of 1993,” Doe said, before reading, “I am sorry I have put you through all this stuff. You are a great person and a very strong person to have gone through all this.” He signed the letter “Sam,” which Doe said was a nickname Walker often used, in reference to a character from a favorite book, called “Cowboy Sam.”
Doe, who first showed her face in a Good Morning America segment last month, also fielded questions at the press conference. She told reporters the last time she had spoken to Walker was in March 2020, when he called her “just checking in” on how she was doing as the COVID pandemic descended.
Asked if she was surprised by the political support Walker received in the wake of her allegation, Doe said she was telling the truth. “And Herschel Walker knows that I am telling the truth,” she said.
When a reporter asked Doe if she hoped her story would impact the runoff, she replied, “It is up to the voters of Georgia to decide who they want to represent them.”
The Daily Beast asked a Walker campaign spokesperson whether the candidate would meet the challenge, but didn’t receive a reply.
Asked what it means to see Walker possibly elected to a position of power in the Senate, the woman replied that she had moved on a long time ago and lived a “very full and happy life.”
“And I have a beautiful daughter and great friends and I am very happy in my life, but he chose to do this,” she said. “I think this is something he just needs to carry because it's caused collateral damage.”
