Complaint against MPP was ignored, staffer says

A woman is asking Ontario’s integrity commissioner to investigate her complaint of sexual assault against a former MPP — and why it went ignored more than a decade ago.

The former political staffer, who is represented by Toronto lawyer John Nunziata, said she was groped, propositioned and had to endure the MPP’s “chronic inebriation.”

The woman says that after she came forward, her complaint was shuffled to another department, never dealt with and she was moved to another job and eventually let go.

She recently sent a letter detailing the 2006 accusations to an email address for Premier Kathleen Wynne, and subsequently received a followup email from a lawyer.

Wynne has said her constituency office received the “troubling allegations” against the unnamed former politician, who “left the Legislature many years ago and was never a member of my or premier (Dalton) McGuinty’s cabinet.”

Nunziata said three weeks elapsed between the time his client emailed the premier and received a response, which he called disrespectful.

The woman’s allegations include “repulsive and adulterous groping, propositioning and innuendo and chronic inebriation.”

She says that when she alerted the personnel department about what was going on, it was eventually dismissed so as not to “embarrass” the premier of the day.

She says the “crux of the issue” is that the MPP was not held accountable. She “ended up losing her job and she suffered mental anguish for the last 10 years,” Nunziata has said.

He is hoping the commissioner will take on the case as a “disclosure of wrongdoing” under the Public Service of Ontario Act, which is used when an “act or omission” of a public servant or elected official creates harm or “gross mismanagement.”