Don Meredith is seen during an interview in Toronto on Mar. 16, 2017.Colin Perkel/The Canadian Press
A former Canadian senator has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of criminal harassment in relation to alleged incidents during which he was still a member of Parliament’s upper house.
Don Meredith was charged Saturday, the Ottawa police sexual assault and child abuse section said, after an investigation into a woman’s allegations of sexual assault in 2013 and 2014. Police said she was an adult at the time.
Mr. Meredith, 58, served as a senator in the Red Chamber between 2010 and 2017. He was released Saturday on a promise to appear in court.
Ottawa police say they’re concerned there could be more victims and are asking anyone with more information to get in contact.
Mr. Meredith resigned as senator five years ago just as his colleagues were about to vote on his ouster over allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a teenage girl.
The allegations were outlined in a probe by a Senate investigations officer that determined Mr. Meredith had a two-year sexual relationship with a girl that started when she was 16 years old.
The former senator denied having sex with the woman before she became an adult, but the report alleged that he had intercourse with the girl once when she was 17 and twice when she was 18.
Mr. Meredith, who at the time was a Pentecostal pastor, said he was moving forward with his life to support his wife and children.
“I am acutely aware that the Upper Chamber is more important than my moral failings,” the former senator wrote in 2017.
In 2020, the Senate paid $498,000 plus legal fees in compensation to nine of Mr. Meredith’s former employees after another ethics investigation found a pattern of inappropriate behaviour by the former senator.
The report said Mr. Meredith’s behaviour included demeaning, belittling, and humiliating staff members. It also found he sexually harassed staff by kissing, touching and intimidating them.
With reports from Laura Stone and The Canadian Press