A Toronto jury on Sunday discovered Peter Nygard, the high-profile govt behind a fallen vogue empire, responsible of 4 counts of sexual assault after simply over three days of deliberation on the finish of a six-week trial.
He was discovered not responsible of 1 depend of sexual assault and one depend of forcible confinement. His sentencing date might be set later this month.
The decision represents the primary prison conviction in opposition to Mr. Nygard, 82, who has been in jail for the final two years. He’s additionally anticipated to face trial on prices of intercourse crimes subsequent June in Montreal, and in Winnipeg, the place a trial date has not been set.
On the conclusion of the Canadian proceedings, Mr. Nygard might be extradited to New York to face intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and different charges in a nine-count indictment. Mr. Nygard appealed the New York extradition ruling in Winnipeg — his hometown and the previous base of Nygard Worldwide, his clothes firm — citing poor well being, however the court docket has not but issued its determination.
5 girls, whose testimony makes up the majority of the prosecution’s proof within the Toronto trial, testified that they had been lured by Mr. Nygard to a personal bedroom suite in his Toronto headquarters underneath false pretenses, corresponding to receiving a constructing tour, and sexually assaulted. The complainants had been between the ages of 16 and 28 through the assaults, which they accused Mr. Nygard of committing between the 1980s and 2005. Their names are protected by a court-ordered publication ban.
“It’s one thing that has tainted my life,” mentioned one complainant, now in her 60s, who first accused Mr. Nygard in 1998 of raping her nearly a decade earlier. She dropped her criticism to Toronto police quickly after, fearing reprisal from the style mogul after she discovered that his chief safety officer flew to Toronto to canvass for details about her identification, she mentioned.
One other lady, a former worker, broke into tears whereas testifying that Mr. Nygard had sexually assaulted her throughout a celebration on the Toronto workplace, the place he had employed her to work as a hostess.
“I don’t know why someone would rent me and simply do this to me,” she mentioned, including that she didn’t inform anybody what had occurred. “He’s so rich and so highly effective, who would consider me?”
Attorneys for the prosecution and the protection spent a lot of their time mining the recollections of the individuals on the stand, together with Mr. Nygard, who testified in his own defense for a couple of week.
He persistently denied the accusations and mentioned that he didn’t keep in mind ever assembly 4 of the complainants, however mentioned that he acknowledged his former worker. Mr. Nygard’s testimony was marked by frequent bouts of what he referred to as “short-term reminiscence loss,” although prosecutors questioned his potential to recollect, in nice element, different details.
The place his reminiscence failed him, Mr. Nygard instructed jurors that the sexual assaults and rapes described by the ladies weren’t in his character.
“My place is that I’d not have carried out myself in that sort of method,” Mr. Nygard mentioned, responding to the prosecutors’ assertions that he had sought out contact info from some complainants and supplied to assist their careers.
“I’d not have been taking numbers from some feminine who was making an attempt to be approaching me,” Mr. Nygard mentioned. “This can be a suicidal sort of factor in entrance of the media, and that’s a complete no-no.”
Ana Serban, a prosecutor, characterised Mr. Nygard’s testimony as evasive, inconsistent and incorrect.
“His reminiscence was unreliable in addition to selective,” Ms. Serban mentioned in her closing argument to the jury. “You shouldn’t have any problem rejecting his blanket denials.”
Data that might have assisted Mr. Nygard’s rebuttals, he mentioned, had burned in “a mysterious hearth” at a former warehouse in Winnipeg about 10 days earlier than his arrest in October 2021. The constructing was put in receivership by a court docket after his firm filed for chapter in 2020.
“The one factor that was misplaced was the paper information that the receiver had put into this shed underneath their management,” Mr. Nygard mentioned, including {that a} hacking incident that yr had compromised his digital information as properly. However he insisted that he tried to assist the police investigation by taking part in an 11-hour interview with a Toronto detective.
The responsible verdict comes after Brian Greenspan, a lawyer for the protection, urged the jury throughout closing arguments on Tuesday to reject the “revisionist histories of occasions” instructed by the 5 girls and the prosecution’s narrative of Mr. Nygard’s “Jekyll and Hyde persona.”
4 of the ladies are concerned in a category motion in opposition to Mr. Nygard in the US, a degree raised by the protection throughout cross-examination to counsel that the ladies had been fabricating their tales for a shot at monetary acquire. “Gold digging runs deep,” Mr. Greenspan mentioned of 1 complainant’s testimony.
The civil motion is yet one more authorized battlefront for Mr. Nygard. In May, he was ordered by a New York State decide to pay $203 million in defamation swimsuit damages to Louis Bacon, a hedge fund billionaire whose feud with Mr. Nygard started over a property dispute within the Bahamas and spiraled into twenty years of authorized sparring.
Mr. Nygard attributed the stamina he saved all through his high-octane lifestyle — glamorous events, journeys around the globe in his personal airplane, being within the firm of dignitaries — to his obsession with well being. He instructed jurors that he averted sugary and starchy meals, didn’t take medicine or smoke, and maintained an energetic way of life that left him flush with vitality regardless of typically working 18-hour days.
Mr. Nygard wore a black swimsuit and orange-tinted glasses, and his signature lengthy hair was in a low bun at some point of the trial. He was visibly relaxed for many of his testimony, generally laughing at his personal remarks, and spoke with confidence about his effort to study one new phrase per day.
However he mentioned he didn’t know the phrase “Cognac,” the kind of brandy that the youngest sufferer testified Mr. Nygard served to her earlier than he raped her when she was 16.
“I actually wouldn’t wish to study a liquor phrase,” Mr. Nygard mentioned throughout his cross-examination.
In her closing argument, Ms. Serban, the prosecutor, cited the change for example of why the jury shouldn’t depend on Mr. Nygard’s testimony.
“Right here’s a person who enjoys the finer issues in life,” she mentioned. “Somebody with a style for luxurious. He needs to present his company the most effective expertise, and he can have you consider that he doesn’t know the phrase ‘Cognac’?”
