Now the Sun has this...
TORONTO — A key accusation which cost Patrick Brown the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party – that he plied an underage high school girl with booze – is not true, CTV News now acknowledges.
The stunning revelation concerns a woman who told CTV that when she was a student in a Barrie high school, the then federal Conservative MP took her home from a bar, gave her booze, took her to his room, and crudely asked for oral sex.
“She now says that she was of legal drinking age and out of high school,”
the CTV News online article published late Tuesday says.
The item is the fifth paragraph in a news story that begins with the accusers saying they “are not backing down” from the claims that toppled a potential premier-in-waiting.
Brown also previously stated that one of the accusers described being in a second floor bedroom, which he says is impossible because at the time in question, he was renting a small, one-storey apartment. He noted he has corroboration on this point.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/former-pc-ontario-leader-patrick-brown-1.4530770
I must confess I find what passes for journalism here deeply disturbing.
The initial headlines were problematic, mentioning sex in the same breath as 'underaged'; when, at the time, the latter was in reference to the drinking age.
As it turns out, it appears, the women in question were not under any age (drinking or consent).
There remain questions about Mr. Brown's judgement to be sure.
But this appears more and more as an intentional hatchet job.
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I have to say here, I have no time for misogynist BS; and I was no particular fan of Mr. Brown's before this whole debacle, and still can't say I am one.
But when I see things like this, I also reflect on another CTV hatchet job............anyone remember Stephane Dion? A Liberal aspirant to the office of PM, who CTV demeaned unfairly, surely costing him his job as Liberal leader and any shot he had at being PM.
I'm not a fan of media playing King/Queen maker or dethroner. If they do so, they really ought to be able to achieve it on meritorious facts, that are provable and corroborated; I don't think that's too much to ask.
I also have deep concern about the damage this may do to many women who have suffered legitimate abuse, criminal or otherwise, who now may not be believed, because again we have 'witnesses' caught in a lie.
