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The five women who testified that Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard sexually assaulted them described to jurors over the past four weeks how they ended up in the hidden bedroom of his office.
Decades ago, they said, each of them accepted Mr. Nygard’s invitation to visit the elegant Toronto headquarters of his fashion kingdom, Nygard International. He was an enthusiastic tour guide, they testified, showing off a high-end automobile in the garage as well as a shiny showroom. But, they said, what he was most excited about was taking guests upstairs to the wood-paneled bedroom, complete with a fireplace, a stone Jacuzzi, a stocked bar and a full-size bed.
It was behind the sliding doors of that room, which Nygard could operate and lock with a keypad on the nightstand, where each of the women said he sexually assaulted them.
“I was a prisoner in that room,” said one woman, the last of five complainants who concluded testimony in a Toronto court this week as prosecutors prepare to close their case. “The door opening is burned into my psyche,” she later added.
The five women, who were between 16 and 28 years old at the time of the alleged attacks, are the central witnesses in the case against Nygard, who faces charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement in the Toronto trial, which began on September 26. . She has repeatedly denied the allegations in statements from her legal team and pleaded not guilty to the charges. (The women’s names are withheld due to a court-ordered publication ban to protect victims of sexual assault.)
The trial is the start of what could be years of criminal proceedings for Nygard, now 82 and in declining health, his attorneys said. He also faces sexual assault charges in New York, where he will be extradited once cases in Toronto, Montreal and his hometown of Winnipeg are completed.
The charges represent a dramatic reversal of fortune for a man once hailed as a rags-to-riches success, and have derailed Nygard’s decades-long effort (the subject of a Times investigation) to overturn assault allegations. sexual assault brought against him in civil lawsuits.
In Toronto, prosecutors argued that Nygard had a pattern of luring women to his office bedroom in different episodes from the 1980s to 2005.
The women at trial described feeling excited and hesitant about Mr. Nygard’s offer to meet, as the invitations materialized after a simple, chance meeting with him on a plane. But eventually they all agreed to tour the downtown office building, attend a corporate party there, or discuss career opportunities.
The design of Nygard International’s Toronto headquarters reflected the Finnish heritage and personal tastes of its founder. Lush indoor greenery cascaded down an open staircase and meetings were held around a coffee table carved from a slab of the Berlin Wall.
Nygard showed each of the women a futuristic sliding door that revealed the entrance to the bedroom, they testified.
The poorly lit room immediately struck the fifth central witness as a “squalid environment,” he told jurors during two days of testimony this week, adding: “It was the opposite of what I would have expected.”
Nygard had met the woman at a lavish event at an Ottawa nightclub when she was in her early 20s and juggling jobs as a television host, artist and aspiring clothing designer, he said. Later, Nygard called her mother, she said, to suggest that she could help with her career.
But the business meeting never happened. Instead, after flying her to Toronto from Los Angeles and making sexual comments over a brief meal of oysters, Nygard took the woman upstairs on what she thought was a “pit stop” on a tour of the office. , he testified. He pinned her to the bed and raped her, she told the jury, at times tearful, with a support dog sleeping next to her on the witness stand.
She testified that he ignored her repeated pleas for him to stop and then became angry with them, telling her: “The girls let me do this. Why don’t you let me do this? and “Don’t you know how it works?”
The woman’s mother, who testified Wednesday, advised her daughter not to alert the police at the time because of Mr. Nygard’s enormous wealth and reputation. When the woman finally reported the assault to the Los Angeles police in 2020 and to the Toronto police in 2021, she had the support of Gloria Allred, a renowned women’s rights lawyer in the United States who has represented victims in several high-profile sexual assault cases. .
Brian Greenspan, the veteran Toronto defense lawyer representing Mr. Nygard, pressed the woman on whether she planned to pursue civil litigation. He said that was not on her mind, adding that Ms. Allred was not hired to represent her.
Four of the plaintiffs are involved in another lawsuit in the United States, which Greenspan says is financed by Louis Bacon, a hedge fund billionaire who owns a property in the Bahamas next to Nygard’s. The two wealthy neighbors have been involved in multimillion-dollar legal disputes for decades.
Mr. Nygard has been awaiting his criminal trial in prison for the past two years after being arrested at his home in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The first witness met Mr. Nygard during a flight to Toronto from the Bahamas. She testified that he raped her in the office bedroom in 1989.
The younger complainant, now 35, testified that she was a teenager when she and the older man she was dating were invited to what was supposed to be an “elaborate and extravagant” party at Mr. Nygard’s office. There was no party. Instead, her partner insisted that Mr. Nygard examine her “undeveloped” genitals, despite her refusal, she testified. Another woman was present when Nygard raped her, she said.
“I remember looking at her hoping she would stop it, and she didn’t,” the woman said.
The trial resumes next week and is expected to conclude in less than three weeks.
Mathew Silver contributed reporting from Toronto.