Patrick Brown’s 23-year-old girlfriend says the ousted former Progressive Conservative leader “is one of the most respectful, decent and caring individuals I have ever met.”

“You can ask any questions you want but I have no interest in participating in an attack on a good man,” Genevieve Gualtieri said in a text message to the Star.

“It is wrong how the media has treated him.”

Known to friends as “GG,” Gualtieri worked as an intern in Brown’s office on Parliament Hill when he was a Conservative MP before moving to Queen’s Park in May 2015 — about two weeks after Brown became Progressive Conservative leader.

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She was paid $500 a week as an intern, arriving when she was 21, sources say, and Gualtieri has accompanied Brown on several overseas trips while he was leader, including to India.

Friends said they have been an on-again-off-again couple for several years and that she rallied to his side after CTV’s Jan. 24 report alleging sexual impropriety against Brown by two women when they were teenagers and he was a Tory MP.

Brown, who turns 40 in May, has said the allegations are false, and has been publicly fighting back in a bid to clear his name.

CTV stands by its story — as do both women, even though one has since acknowledged that she initially had some details wrong regarding her drunken encounter with a sober Brown.

Last Friday, the same day he was turfed from the Tory caucus, Brown announced he was running again for his old job as PC leader.

He has made a number of public appearances since and Gualtieri was campaigning at his side in Orillia on the Family Day long weekend.

Tory insiders say she knows the region well. During the Simcoe North byelection won by Brown in September 2015, friends described her as an enthusiastic campaign worker.

“I have nothing but good things to say,” Gualtieri, who works at the SickKids Foundation, told the Star in a brief telephone interview last week after being asked to vouch for Brown’s character.

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Brown did not respond to repeated requests from the Star for this story. However, in a Tuesday afternoon email to supporters, he claimed that he is the target of “smear campaigns” orchestrated by Tory “elites and insiders.”

“They think they can use my personal life, family and relationships against me as attacks,” Brown said in his missive.

“They are going to fight. They are going to lie. Party insiders don’t want us to win,” he said.

“You’d think it would be the Liberals who are sitting back and running smear campaigns. It’s not. Some elites and insiders think they are above process and above the grassroots.”

Gualtieri did not respond to follow-up text, voicemail and email messages asking her to clarify her relationship with Brown, and when it began.

The Star has learned she accompanied Brown on a 2016 trip to India with PC caucus members, who thought the youthful woman was a junior staffer. Gualtieri has also travelled to Beirut and other overseas destinations with the then-PC leader.

It is unclear who paid for the trips. Gualtieri has not answered questions asking who covered the costs.

Randy Hillier's complaint to the Integrity Commissioner View document on Scribd

Tory MPP Randy Hillier, who on Tuesday filed a complaint about Brown to the provincial integrity commissioner, also raised questions about the travel.

“In January 2016, Patrick Brown was allegedly provided with an all-expense paid trip to India for himself and an intern from the party, Ms. Genevieve Gualtieri, with whom he is alleged to have been in a personal relationship,” Hillier said in his request to the integrity commissioner.

“They travelled on gifted trips to Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and Fiji … none of these trips were disclosed to the integrity commissioner,” the MPP alleges.

While abroad, Gualtieri posted pictures to her private Instagram account. In Beirut, she wrote: “Extremely humbled to have visited this Syrian refugee camp” and to have seen so many orphaned children. And in New Delhi, beneath a photo of Brown and others riding an elephant, she joked: “Whoever said ‘let’s get rid of the elephant in the room’ had clearly never met Lakshmi.”

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