The 82-year-old founding father of considered one of Canada’s largest clothes manufacturers convicted of costs linked to incidents between 1988 and 2005.
Former Canadian style mogul Peter Nygard has been discovered responsible of 4 counts of sexual assault, a court docket in Toronto has mentioned.
Nygard, 82, was on trial within the Ontario Superior Court docket for 5 counts of sexual assault and one depend of forcible confinement, costs linked to incidents between 1988 and 2005. The fees concerned 4 girls and a 16-year-old woman.
The jury handed down the decision on Sunday, the fifth day of deliberations following a six-week trial. Nygard was acquitted on one depend of sexually assaulting one of many girls who testified on the trial.
The trial addressed the primary in a sequence of costs he faces for intercourse crimes in opposition to a number of girls over a number of a long time in Canada and the USA.
“I do know it’s been a protracted and arduous case for you,” Justice Robert Goldstein instructed the jury.
Nygard’s lawyer Brian Greenspan didn’t rule out the opportunity of interesting the decision. Through the closing arguments, Greenspan mentioned the case was constructed on “contradictions and innuendo” as he panned the prosecution’s portrayal of his shopper.
“To explain Peter Nygard as an evil predator, a Jekyll and Hyde character who, via wealth and energy, lured girls to his den of iniquity and compelled girls to conform together with his sexual calls for… is neither truthful nor correct,” he mentioned.
Prosecutor Ana Serban, then again, mentioned Nygard on the stand was evasive and inconsistent, and that his reminiscence was unreliable and selective.
Serban pointed to “remarkably related accounts” of his 5 accusers, unbiased of one another, about how they met Nygard, have been invited to his workplace constructing and “how he sexually assaulted them in his personal bed room suite”.
“The similarities defy coincidence,” she mentioned. “It’s a sample of behaviour.”
Testifying in his personal defence, Nygard didn’t recall assembly or figuring out 4 of his accusers and insisted he by no means raped any of the 5.
“The kind of allegations that have been mentioned and have been described is the kind of conduct that I do know that I’ve by no means finished, I by no means would do,” he instructed the court docket, even whereas admitting that his reminiscence had change into “very fuzzy” with age.
He’ll return to court docket on November 21 for sentencing.
Nygard, who in 1967 based the agency that was to change into Nygard Worldwide, has been held in detention since his arrest in 2020.
He should now face related costs in Quebec and Manitoba. in addition to extradition to the US the place he has been accused of sexually assaulting dozens of girls and women, racketeering and trafficking.
Born in Finland, Nygard grew up in Manitoba, ultimately operating his namesake clothes corporations and changing into considered one of Canada’s wealthiest individuals.
