Hours after a Rolling Stones live performance in downtown Toronto, a lady discovered herself trapped within the plush bed room of an workplace constructing with Peter Nygard, a famend Canadian style mogul on the time, the girl testified in courtroom on Tuesday.
When she rebuffed his advances, he grew to become enraged, she advised jurors, pulling off her garments and raping her. Afterward, she mentioned, he threw a Canadian 100-dollar invoice at her as she fled.
The lady’s description of the 1989 sexual assault is a key a part of prosecutors’ case towards Mr. Nygard, now 82, who’s accused of sexually assaulting five women in a bed room suite at his firm’s headquarters in downtown Toronto. He was charged two years in the past by the Toronto Police with 5 counts of sexual assault and one rely of forcible confinement for episodes starting within the 1980s.
Mr. Nygard has additionally been indicted by prosecutors in Manhattan, and he’s set to be extradited to New York after his prison circumstances, which embody fees in Montreal and Winnipeg, conclude in Canada. Over a 25-year interval, federal prosecutors in Manhattan mentioned, he used his firm’s affect, its cash and its staff to recruit grownup and minor feminine victims for the sexual gratification of him and his associates.
Mr. Nygard has pleaded not responsible to the costs and has denied the accusations by statements from his attorneys
The Toronto trial, which opened final week, is the primary time that any prison fees within the case towards Mr. Nygard had been heard in courtroom. The lady, an actress whose title has been banned from publication by a courtroom order to guard victims in sexual assault circumstances, was additionally the primary of the accusers to testify earlier than a jury, throughout what is predicted to be a seven-week trial.
She advised the courtroom on Tuesday that Mr. Nygard had invited her to attend the Stones live performance a number of months after they met throughout a Toronto-bound flight from the Bahamas. The circumstances of the assembly had been odd, she mentioned, and concerned somebody from Mr. Nygard’s entourage summoning her from her economy-class seat to be launched to him in enterprise class.
Mr. Nygard took her on a go to to his workplace constructing, she mentioned, resulting in his bed room suite on the fifth ground and shutting the door behind them. That’s when, the girl mentioned, she realized there was no doorknob and requested him how she might go away.
Mr. Nygard then punched a couple of numbers right into a keypad beside the mattress to open the door, she testified. However when the girl tried the keypad, guessing the numbers, it could not open, she testified, typically tearfully.
“It was like a nightmare,” she advised jurors. “I used to be beginning to panic somewhat bit. I assumed, ‘One thing is de facto mistaken right here.’ I used to be trapped.”
Mr. Nygard’s temper shifted after she accused him of raping her, the girl mentioned, and he referred to as her a taxi and threw the cash in her course.
“It was again to enterprise, as if nothing had occurred, like a character swap,” she mentioned.
Prosecutors have described a sample of Mr. Nygard’s luring the victims, on the time between 16 and 28 years previous, into his bed room suite. The tactic, they mentioned, often concerned inviting them on a tour of the workplace that led to his bed room, a collection embellished to resemble a cabin with wooden panels on the ceiling, log put up beams and uncovered brick partitions.
It was full with a stone Jacuzzi, a bar and pornography movies enjoying on a big tv, the courtroom heard.
Mr. Nygard had usually been photographed round teams of younger girls, cultivating a picture of a playboy millionaire.
His privately held firm provided him with the sources and staff that prosecutors say both enabled or participated in his pursuit of girls to sexually assault.
At its peak, his firm was a worldwide clothes model and mentioned it employed 12,000 folks. It filed for chapter in 2020.
Mr. Nygard, who was arrested in Winnipeg in 2020 on the request of america underneath an extradition treaty, will remained jailed throughout the trial.
