Hours after a Rolling Stones live performance in downtown Toronto, a lady was trapped within the luxurious bed room of an workplace constructing with Peter Nygard, then a well known Canadian style mogul, the lady testified in court docket Tuesday.
When she rejected his advances, he flew right into a rage, she informed jurors, stripping off her garments and raping her. Then, she stated, he threw a $100 Canadian invoice at her as she fled.
The lady’s description of the 1989 assault is a key a part of the prosecutor’s case in opposition to Mr. Nygard, now 82, who’s accused of sexually assaulting 5 girls in a bed room suite at his firm’s downtown headquarters of Toronto. He was charged by Toronto police two years in the past with 5 counts of sexual assault and one depend of forcible confinement for episodes that started within the Nineteen Eighties.
Mr. Nygard has additionally been charged by prosecutors in Manhattan, and shall be extradited to New York after his prison instances, together with prices in Montreal and Winnipeg, are accomplished in Canada. Over a 25-year interval, federal prosecutors in Manhattan say he used his firm’s affect, cash and staff to recruit grownup and minor feminine victims for his and his associates’ sexual gratification.
Mr Nygard has pleaded not responsible to the costs and has denied the allegations by way of statements made by his legal professionals
The Toronto trial, which began final week, marks the primary time prison prices within the case in opposition to Mr. Nygard have been heard in court docket. The lady, an actress whose title can’t be revealed beneath a court docket order to guard victims in sexual assault instances, was additionally the primary of the accusers to testify earlier than a jury in a trial anticipated to final seven weeks.
She informed the court docket on Tuesday that Mr Nygard invited her to attend the Stones live performance simply months after they met on a flight to Toronto from the Bahamas. The circumstances of the assembly have been unusual, she stated, and included somebody from Mr. Nygard’s entourage calling her from her economic system class seat to be launched to him in enterprise class.
Mr. Nygard took her to go to his workplace constructing, she stated, and led him to his fifth-floor bed room and closed the door behind him. At that time, the lady stated, she realized there was no doorknob and requested him how she may go away.
Mr. Nygard then punched a couple of numbers right into a keypad subsequent to the mattress to open the door, she testified. However when the lady tried the keyboard and guessed the numbers, it would not open, she testified, generally in tears.
“It was like a nightmare,” she informed jurors. “I began to panic a bit. I believed, ‘One thing is actually flawed right here.’ I used to be imprisoned.”
Mr. Nygard’s temper modified after she accused him of raping her, the lady stated, and he referred to as her a cab and threw the cash in her route.
“It was again to enterprise, as if nothing had occurred, type of a persona change,” she stated.
Prosecutors have described a sample during which Mr. Nygard lured the victims, ages 16 to twenty-eight on the time, into his bed room. The tactic, they stated, often concerned inviting them on a tour of the workplace that led to his bed room, a collection adorned like a hut with wood-paneled ceilings, picket beams and brick partitions.
It was full with a stone jacuzzi, a bar and pornographic movies performed on a big tv, the court docket heard.
Mr. Nygard was usually photographed round teams of younger girls, cultivating the picture of a playboy millionaire.
His non-public firm supplied him with the assets and staff who prosecutors say enabled or participated in his pursuit of ladies for sexual abuse.
At its peak, his firm was a worldwide clothes model and stated it employed 12,000 individuals. It filed for chapter in 2020.
Mr Nygard, who was arrested in Winnipeg in 2020 on the request of america beneath an extradition treaty, will stay jailed in the course of the trial.
