Another harassment accusation against Stoffer

Another woman is publicly accusing Peter Stoffer of sexual harassment while he served as a member of parliament.

Ingrid Deon, 36, was a newly hired Nova Scotia NDP caucus staffer when, she said, Stoffer propositioned her after a fisheries-related community meeting at the Meteghan fire hall on March 8, 2007.

Deon said she was approached by the then SackvillePreston-chezzetcook MP after the meeting, which extended well into the evening, and was invited to stay at his hotel in Digby.

The pair, along with then NDP Queens-shelburne MLA Sterling Belliveau, were to attend another meeting together in the community the next day.

“I can’t remember if he said, stay in the room with me, or stay with me, but the offer was made with a wink and a grin,” recalled Deon on Sunday. “It was not innocent at all. He knew what he was doing.”

Deon, who was living in Yarmouth at the time, said she rejected Stoffer’s invitation.

She said he persisted, making three more offers before Deon left on her own and drove home.

Deon said Stoffer was concerned about the amount of driving she had ahead of her with another meeting scheduled in Digby the next morning. But Deon pointed out that the distance to her home in Yarmouth was shorter than the drive to Digby.

“I was pretty shocked. I was 25 years old and he was way older and in a position of authority. He kind of laughed about it.

“I was completely blindsided. I felt like my skin was crawling.”

Deon, who still has a copy of the notes she kept of the meeting, said Stoffer had been engaging with the near capacity crowd. She said up until after the meeting, he had not acted inappropriately. She said Stoffer never touched her.

Deon said soon after the incident she shared her story with her supervisor, hoping that her complaint would be dealt with properly by senior people in the party. But she said he laughed it off and that was the last time she discussed the alleged incident with a party official. She said in her four years working with the party, she worked with dozens of MLAS and was never treated inappropriately.

Stoffer stated in a text message to The Chronicle Herald that he had no memory of the event and that he had nothing more to add beyond, “he had stayed at the press conference.”

Deon, who now lives in Pubnico and works for a marketing company based in Halifax and Toronto, went public with her story in a Facebook post on Saturday. She said with her boyfriend’s support, she was prompted to speak out after other media reports surfaced detailing Stoffer’s alleged inappropriate behaviour toward women.

One of those stories appeared in The Chronicle Herald in which a woman, who did not want to be identified, also accused Stoffer of propositioning her in the early 2000s when she was a young staffer for the party.

On Thursday, the National Post reported allegations against Stoffer, ranging from unwanted kissing and groping to invitations for threesomes and other inappropriate comments, from early in his tenure to just before his defeat.

Since then, others have also come forward on social media and to other media outlets with similar stories.

Deon’s Facebook post served as a larger story of overcoming sexual abuse. She describes two other instances where a man had sexually assaulted her.