Peter Nygard, who as soon as led a girls’s style empire, was discovered responsible of 4 counts of sexual assault in a Canadian court docket on Sunday however was acquitted of a fifth depend plus a cost of forcible confinement.
The jury handed down the decision on the fifth day of deliberations following a six-week trial in Toronto.
Nygard, 82, had pleaded not responsible to all costs, which stemmed from allegations relationship again from the Nineteen Eighties to the mid-2000s.
5 girls – whose identities are protected by a publication ban – had testified that they have been invited to Nygard’s Toronto headquarters below pretexts starting from excursions to job interviews, with all encounters ending in a top-floor bed room suite the place 4 of them have been sexually assaulted.
A number of complainants informed the jury related tales of assembly Nygard on a aircraft, at an airport tarmac or at a nightclub after which receiving invites to return to headquarters. All 5 girls stated their conferences or interactions with Nygard ended with sexual exercise that they didn’t consent to.
One of many complainants testified that Nygard wouldn’t let her depart his personal suite for a while, which led to the forcible confinement cost. Others additionally testified about feeling trapped within the suite, describing doorways that needed to be opened with a keypad code or the push of a button close to the mattress.
One girl testified that she was solely 16 years {old} when she accompanied an older man she was relationship on the time to Nygard’s headquarters, the place she stated Nygard sexually assaulted her after which one other girl handed her an emergency contraceptive tablet on her means out.
Nygard testified in his personal protection on the trial and denied all 5 girls’s allegations, saying he didn’t even recall assembly or interacting with 4 of them. He insisted he would by no means have interaction in the kind of conduct he was accused of, and stated nobody may have been locked inside his personal suite below any circumstances.
On the finish of the trial, prosecutors argued that Nygard was evasive and unreliable in his testimony and that the similarities in all 5 girls’s tales confirmed a sample in his conduct.
The protection argued that the complainants crafted a “false narrative” about Nygard and prompt their sexual assault claims have been motivated by a class-action lawsuit in opposition to Nygard in the USA.
Nygard remains to be dealing with prison costs in three different jurisdictions.
He’s dealing with costs of sexual assault and forcible confinement in separate {cases} in Quebec and Manitoba, associated to allegations relationship again to the Nineties. He’s additionally dealing with costs within the U.S.
Nygard was first arrested in Winnipeg in 2020 below the Extradition Act after he was charged with 9 counts in New York, together with intercourse trafficking and racketeering costs.
The federal justice minister on the time had stated Nygard could be extradited to the U.S. after the {cases} in opposition to him in Canada are resolved.
Nygard based a style firm in Winnipeg in 1967 that in the end grew to become Nygard Worldwide. The corporate produced girls’s clothes below a number of model names and had company amenities in each Canada and the U.S.
Nygard stepped down as chairman of the corporate after the FBI and police raided his workplaces in New York Metropolis in February 2020. The corporate has since filed for chapter and entered into receivership.