'Almost like being in an abusive relationship': Shocking new allegations about Rick Chiarelli

WARNING: Some readers may find certain details offensive or upsetting.

The City of Ottawa's integrity commissioner is formally investigating complaints filed by a sixth woman over the behaviour of Coun. Rick Chiarelli, CBC News has learned.

And while some of the allegations may sound familiar — visits to nightclubs to recruit volunteers, pressure to go braless and wear revealing tops —  they also include shocking new details.

The woman, who was in her early 20s when she worked part-time for Chiarelli from 2013 to 2015, said the College ward councillor launched a weeks-long campaign in 2014 to pressure her to perform oral sex on a stranger in exchange for cash.

She said he manipulated her during an especially traumatic period of her life, after she told him she'd been sexually assaulted that summer at an event not connected to her job. 

When she turned to Chiarelli for advice, he told her not to report her assault to police, not to tell her boyfriend and not to seek counselling, the woman said.

CBC has agreed not to name her as she hasn't told her family many of the details of her time working for Chiarelli.

During this same period, the woman said she gave into Chiarelli's constant pressure to go braless to nightclubs for work.

"In the beginning, it was, like, a sheer top with a bra underneath and a skirt and heels," the woman told CBC. "But by the end of working for him, I would go out wearing a skirt and heels and a sheer top with nothing underneath.

"Which is exactly what he wanted."

She said she would drink a couple of glasses of wine or down a few shots before Chiarelli picked her up for these nightclub outings, "just to cope, just to get through it."

"It was almost like being in an abusive relationship, where I was afraid of him, but at the same time, I trusted him and wanted to impress him and make him happy," she said.

In a statement emailed to CBC by the councillor's lawyer, Bruce Sevigny, Chiarelli denies the allegations, calling "many" of them "absolutely preposterous and unbelievable."

The lawyer also wrote that Chiarelli "has good reason" to believe that the allegations and the timing of the story "have been improperly influenced by political considerations."