The 5 ladies testifying that the Canadian trend mogul Peter Nygard sexually assaulted them described for jurors over the previous 4 weeks how they ended up within the hidden bed room suite at his workplace.
A long time in the past, they mentioned, they every accepted Mr. Nygard’s invitation to go to the fashionable Toronto headquarters of his trend kingdom, Nygard Worldwide. He was an keen tour information, they testified, displaying off a high-end automobile within the storage in addition to a glistening showroom. However, they mentioned, he was most enthusiastic about bringing company upstairs to the wood-paneled bed room suite, fitted with a fire, a stone Jacuzzi, a stocked bar and a big mattress.
It was behind the sliding doorways of that room, which Mr. Nygard might function and lock from a keypad on the nightstand, that every of the ladies mentioned he sexually assaulted them.
“I used to be a prisoner in that room,” mentioned one girl, the final of 5 complainants to conclude her testimony at a Toronto courthouse this week as prosecutors put together to shut their case. “The door sliding open is seared in my psyche,” she later added.
The 5 ladies, who have been between 16 and 28 years previous on the time of the alleged assaults, are the central witnesses in the case against Mr. Nygard, who’s going through fees of sexual assault and forcible confinement within the Toronto trial, which started on Sept. 26. He has repeatedly denied the accusations in statements from his authorized staff and pleaded not responsible to the costs. (The ladies’s names are hid by a court-ordered publication ban to guard victims of sexual assault.)
The trial is the start of what might be years of legal proceedings for Mr. Nygard, now 82 and in declining well being, his legal professionals mentioned. He additionally faces sexual assault fees in New York, the place he shall be extradited as soon as the instances in Toronto, Montreal and his hometown, Winnipeg, are full.
The costs symbolize a dramatic reversal of fortune for a person who was as soon as hailed as a rags-to-riches success, and so they have unraveled Mr. Nygard’s decades-long effort — the topic of a Times investigation — to quash sexual assault allegations lodged towards him in civil lawsuits.
In Toronto, prosecutors argued that Mr. Nygard had a sample of luring ladies into his workplace bed room in numerous episodes from the 1980s till 2005.
The ladies within the trial described feeling each excited and hesitant about Mr. Nygard’s provide to fulfill, for the reason that invites materialized after as little as an opportunity encounter with him on an airplane. However all ultimately agreed to tour the downtown workplace constructing, to attend a company celebration there or to debate profession alternatives.
The design of Nygard Worldwide’s Toronto headquarters mirrored the Finnish heritage and preferences of its founder. Lush indoor greenery cascaded down an open staircase, and conferences occurred round a espresso desk carved from a slab of the Berlin Wall.
Mr. Nygard confirmed every of the ladies to a futuristic sliding door that exposed the doorway to the bed room suite, they testified.
The moodily lit room instantly struck the fifth central witness as a “sordid atmosphere,” she advised jurors over two days of testimony this week, including, “It was the other of something I’d have anticipated.”
Mr. Nygard had met the girl at a ritzy occasion at an Ottawa nightclub, when she was in her early 20s and juggling jobs as a TV presenter, artist and aspiring clothes designer, she mentioned. Mr. Nygard later known as her mom, she mentioned, to counsel that he might assist her profession.
However the enterprise assembly by no means occurred. As an alternative, after flying her to Toronto from Los Angeles and making sexual remarks over a quick meal of oysters, Mr. Nygard led the girl upstairs in what she thought was a “pit cease” on a tour of the workplace, she testified. He pinned her on the mattress and raped her, she advised jurors, at moments by tears, with a assist canine napping by her facet on the witness stand.
She testified that he ignored, after which grew to become indignant with, her repeated pleas to cease, telling her, “The women let me do that. Why aren’t you letting me do that?” and “Don’t you understand how it really works?”
The girl’s mom, who testified on Wednesday, suggested her daughter towards alerting the police on the time due to Mr. Nygard’s outsize wealth and repute. When the girl ultimately reported the assault to the Los Angeles police in 2020, and the Toronto police in 2021, she was supported by Gloria Allred, a famend ladies’s rights lawyer in america who has represented victims in a number of high-profile sexual assault instances.
Brian Greenspan, the veteran Toronto protection lawyer representing Mr. Nygard, pressed the girl on whether or not she deliberate to pursue civil litigation. She mentioned that was not on her thoughts, including that Ms. Allred was not retained to symbolize her.
4 of the complainants are concerned in one other lawsuit in america, which Mr. Greenspan says is funded by Louis Bacon, a hedge fund billionaire who owns property within the Bahamas subsequent to Mr. Nygard’s. The 2 rich neighbors have been engaged in multimillion-dollar authorized feuds for many years.
Mr. Nygard has been awaiting his legal trial in jail for the final two years after being arrested at his dwelling in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The primary witness met Mr. Nygard throughout a Toronto-bound flight from the Bahamas. She testified that he raped her within the workplace bed room in 1989.
The youngest complainant, who’s now 35, testified that she was a youngster when she and the older man she was seeing have been invited to what was imagined to be an “elaborate and indulgent” celebration at Mr. Nygard’s workplace. There was no celebration. As an alternative, her companion insisted that Mr. Nygard take a look at her “undeveloped” genitals, regardless of her refusals, she testified. One other girl was current when Mr. Nygard raped her, she mentioned.
“I bear in mind taking a look at her hoping that she would cease it, and she or he didn’t,” the girl mentioned.
The trial resumes subsequent week and is predicted to wrap up in lower than three weeks.
Mathew Silver contributed reporting from Toronto.
