Beginning of the end for Brown?
It is hard to imagine this scene ending well for anyone. Wednesday might have been the beginning of the end of Patrick Brown. And it might be a very rapid end. On Wednesday, near to 10 o’clock, with just a few minutes’ notice, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative leader appeared before harried reporters in his party’s caucus room at Queen’s Park to categorically deny reports of sexual misconduct from two women as reported to CTV News.
As Brown prepared to enter the room his press secretary, Nick Bergamini, looked like death. Brown’s hair had none of its trademarked sculpture, flopping helplessly to one side as if he had recently jumped out of a swimming pool. He, too, looked like death. And at several occasions he seemed very near to weeping.
“First, I want to say these allegations are false — categorically untrue, every one of them. I will defend myself as hard as I can with all means at my disposal,” he said.
The allegations, as reported by CTV:
More than 10 years ago, Brown, then an MP in Ot- tawa, invited two women he met in a bar back to his house in Barrie and served them drinks. One was a high school student, underage, and during a tour of Brown’s home she alleges he strongly suggested she perform oral sex on him.
“I don’t know if he said ‘suck my dick’ or ‘ put this in your mouth,’ but something along those lines,” the woman told CTV. She says she complied for “a short time” before stopping. “It was like a controlling thing ... like I just remember I wanted to go, but that wasn’t happening.”
Another woman told CTV she met Brown on an Air Canada flight in 2012, when she was 18. He provided her tips on gaining entrance to bars in Barrie despite her age, she alleges, and later hired her to work in his constituency office in Barrie. After a party the next year, while drunk, she alleges Brown kissed her and “laid me down on the bed and got on top of me.” She told him to stop and he drove her home, CTV reports. She says considers it to have been “sexual assault.”
None of the allegations have been tested in court; Brown has vehemently denied them.
“I reject these accusations in the strongest possible terms,” Brown told reporters. “It’s not my values, it’s not how I (was) raised, it’s not who I am.”
“It’s never OK for anyone to feel they’ve been a victim of sexual harassment or feel threatened in any way,” Brown said, coming ever closer to tears. “Let me make this clear: a safe and respectful society is what we expect and deserve. And no one appreciates that more than I do, I’ve got two younger sisters who are my best friends.”
Brown said he had told his attorneys to defend him in the proper arena: “a court of law.”
What support beyond his personal lawyers Brown might have at his disposal to contest these allegations is very much in the air. Bergamini tweeted his resignation Wednesday night, as did Brown’s campaign manager Andrew Boddington, his chief of staff Alykhan Velshi, and his deputy campaign manager Dan Robertson. In 2018, nobody wants to be seen backing someone in a situation like this.
I WILL DEFEND MYSELF AS HARD AS I CAN WITH ALL MEANS AT MY DISPOSAL.