What We Know About the Senator Who Allegedly Slept With a Teen Girl

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What We Know About the Senator Who Allegedly Slept With a Teen Girl

In a Canadian senate ethics committee report, a young woman claims Senator Don Meredith initiated a sexual relationship before she was 18.

Canadian senators are attempting to bare the few teeth they have left to oust one of their own after an ethics report indicated he had sex with a teenage girl.

Senator Don Meredith is a community activist, ordained minister, runs the GTA Faith Alliance and was appointed to the Senate in 2010. The Canadian Senate Ethics Committee was first prompted to look into Meredith in 2015 after a request from Senator Leo Housakos following a Toronto Star investigative piece alleging that the senator had a two-year affair with a teenager. After a lengthy investigation themselves, the committee released their full report on March 9 of this year (you can read it in full here).

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The report, put together by senate ethics officer Lyse Ricard, contained some damning accusations and evidence against Meredith. The biggest of the set being that he carried on a sexual relationship with a young girl. The report alleges that Meredith had sex with the girl three times, once while she was 17—the senator denies these claims. The relationship with the girl is alleged to have started when the girl was 16 years old. The senator is currently 52.

The report found that Meredith initiated a relationship with the young woman in early 2013 and knew "very early on" that she was 16 at the time. The woman at the centre of the scandal is interviewed intensively in the report, where she's referred to as Ms. M—she told the ethics committee that the two had three sexual encounters, with only one being intercourse, before she was 18. The final encounter allegedly took place a few days before Ms. M's 18th birthday.

"Ms. M told me that Senator Meredith gave her what he called a "teaser," not full intercourse," reads the report. "Ms. M stated that Senator Meredith penetrated her with his penis for about maybe a minute. Ms. M's lower half was "definitely" naked, but she could not recall if both of them were completely naked."

Ms. M told the ethics commissioner that the two had full sexual intercourse around two months after her 18th birthday. Meredith consented that he did have sex with the girl once but not while she was under 18 and adamantly denies that claim. Ricard in her report states that she believes the woman over Meredith.

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The ethics commision concluded that Meredith abused his power as senator, writing that he "drew upon the weight, prestige and notability of his office, as well as his relative position
of power as a much older adult, to lure or attract Ms. M, a teenager who, by virtue of her age, was necessarily vulnerable." Specifically, Meredith broke two subsection rules in ,7.1(1) [general conduct] and 7.1(2) [idem], of the Ethics and Conflict of Interest Code for Senators.

Meredith was appointed to the senate by then Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2010, he resigned from sitting as a Tory in the senate after the Toronto Star investigation came to light—he now sits as an independent senator. The senators Meredith shares the chamber with are understandably upset by the news and are calling on the Toronto-area senator to resign. Sen. André Pratte, the once longtime editor at La Presse, wrote an open letter to the senator that urges him to step down from his position.

"As a Senator, and as a man, your conduct was unconscionable," reads the letter. "Although you have since taken "remedial steps", you have not issued an apology, to your victim, to the Senate or to Canadians, which you should have done long ago."

While Pratte is not alone in his opinion of Meredith, the shamed senator seems steadfast not to resign on his own power. The senators are looking into other ways of ousting Meredith, and if successful, it would be the first time in their collective history that they have done so. (The easier alternative would be for the Senate to suspend Meredith without pay with motion, but that would need to be constantly renewed.)

Regardless of what happens, Meredith with keep his massive government pension for the time he has spent as a senator.

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