Hours after a Rolling Stones live performance in downtown Toronto, a girl discovered herself trapped within the plush bed room of an workplace constructing with Peter Nygard, a famend Canadian vogue mogul on the time, the lady testified in courtroom on Tuesday.
When she rebuffed his advances, he turned enraged, she informed jurors, pulling off her garments and raping her. Afterward, she stated, he threw a Canadian 100-dollar invoice at her as she fled.
The lady’s description of the 1989 sexual assault is a key a part of prosecutors’ 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 headquarters in downtown Toronto. He was charged two years in the past by the Toronto Police with 5 counts of sexual assault and one rely of forcible confinement for episodes starting within the Nineteen Eighties.
Mr. Nygard has additionally been indicted by prosecutors in Manhattan, and he’s set to be extradited to New York after his legal circumstances, which embody costs in Montreal and Winnipeg, conclude in Canada. Over a 25-year interval, federal prosecutors in Manhattan stated, he used his firm’s affect, its cash and its staff to recruit grownup and minor feminine victims for the sexual gratification of him and his associates.
Mr. Nygard has pleaded not responsible to the fees and has denied the accusations by way of statements from his legal professionals
The Toronto trial, which opened final week, is the primary time that any legal costs within the case in opposition to Mr. Nygard have been heard in courtroom. The lady, an actress whose identify has been banned from publication by a courtroom order to guard victims in sexual assault circumstances, was additionally the primary of the accusers to testify earlier than a jury, throughout what is predicted to be a seven-week trial.
She informed the courtroom on Tuesday that Mr. Nygard had invited her to attend the Stones live performance a number of months after they met throughout a Toronto-bound flight from the Bahamas. The circumstances of the assembly have been odd, she stated, and concerned somebody from Mr. Nygard’s entourage summoning her from her economy-class seat to be launched to him in enterprise class.
Mr. Nygard took her on a go to to his workplace constructing, she stated, resulting in his bed room suite on the fifth ground and shutting the door behind them. That’s when, the lady stated, she realized there was no doorknob and requested him how she might go away.
Mr. Nygard then punched a couple of numbers right into a keypad beside the mattress to open the door, she testified. However when the lady tried the keypad, guessing the numbers, it might not open, she testified, typically tearfully.
“It was like a nightmare,” she informed jurors. “I used to be beginning to panic somewhat bit. I assumed, ‘One thing is actually unsuitable right here.’ I used to be trapped.”
Mr. Nygard’s temper shifted after she accused him of raping her, the lady stated, and he known as her a taxi and threw the cash in her course.
“It was again to enterprise, as if nothing had occurred, like a persona swap,” she stated.
Prosecutors have described a sample of Mr. Nygard’s luring the victims, on the time between 16 and 28 years outdated, into his bed room suite. The tactic, they stated, normally concerned inviting them on a tour of the workplace that led to his bed room, a collection embellished to resemble a cabin with wooden panels on the ceiling, log publish beams and uncovered brick partitions.
It was full with a stone Jacuzzi, a bar and pornography movies taking part in on a big tv, the courtroom heard.
Mr. Nygard had usually been photographed round teams of younger girls, cultivating a picture of a playboy millionaire.
His privately held firm provided him with the sources and staff that prosecutors say both enabled or participated in his pursuit of ladies to sexually assault.
At its peak, his firm was a world clothes model and stated it employed 12,000 folks. It filed for chapter in 2020.
Mr. Nygard, who was arrested in Winnipeg in 2020 on the request of the US underneath an extradition treaty, will remained jailed throughout the trial.
