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However, Ricard said the measures weren’t enough and don’t remedy the harm his actions caused the Senate.

It will now be left to senators to decide what, if any, punishments Meredith will face.

Appointed by former prime minister Stephen Harper, Meredith quit the Conservative caucus in June 2015 after the Toronto Star first reported on the relationship. Meredith now sits as an independent.

Ricard said the two met in at a Black History Month event at a church in Ottawa in February 2013 where Meredith, then 48 years old, was a speaker.

The two then started text messaging and speaking on the phone.

Meredith wrote that he deeply regretted what happened, but God, his wife, and his two children had forgiven him.

As for her age, the report says the woman told Meredith three weeks after meeting that she was 16, but Meredith told Ricard he could not recall when that happened. Ricard sided with the woman’s version of events.

The woman said the two started having sexually explicit chats online in April 2014. During these chats, Ricard wrote, Meredith progressed from admiring her taking her clothes off to masturbating; Meredith couldn’t recalled masturbating on camera, “but if he did, ’it was an interaction.”’

Ricard wrote that in December 2014, a few days before the woman’s 18th birthday, the woman said she and Meredith were in her apartment when Meredith “gave her what he called a ’teaser”’, something Meredith denied. The woman said Meredith “penetrated her with his penis for about maybe a minute,” which Meredith denied.

Meredith told Ricard he never penetrated the woman before 2015.

The relationship ended in May 2015 and the two haven’t had contact since.

Ricard said she found the woman to be a credible witness. The woman’s testimony was often directly supported by text messages and emails she had kept, as well as with Meredith’s Senate cell phone records, Ricard wrote.

Ricard said that Meredith denied certain interactions occurred, saying that the woman was lying about events that the documentary evidence suggested had actually occurred.