Peter Nygard, the founder of one of Canada’s top apparel firms, was convicted guilty of four counts of s**ual assault on Sunday, according to a Toronto court.
According to Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, the jury acquitted the Finnish-Canadian Nygard on one count of s**ually assaulting one of the women who testified during the seven-week trial, as well as one count of forcible imprisonment.
The claims against the former fashion mogul, now 82, involve four women and a 16-year-old child and stem from incidents between 1988 and 2005.
The trial focused on the first of several accusations he faces for s** offenses committed against multiple women in Canada and the United States over several decades.
“I know it’s been a long and arduous case for you,” Justice Robert Goldstein told the jury.
Nygard’s lawyer, Brian Greenspan, did not rule out appealing the verdict as he left the courtroom.
During closing arguments, Greenspan argued the case was founded on “contradictions and innuendo” and criticized the prosecution’s representation of his client.
“To describe Peter Nygard as an evil predator, a Jekyll and Hyde personality who, through wealth and power, lured women to his den of iniquity and forced women to comply with his sexual demands… is neither fair nor accurate,” he said.
Greenspan called the complainants’ evidence “painfully absurd,” and he suggested that four of the women were motivated by financial gain or “gold-digging,” because they admitted to being involved in a US class-action lawsuit against him.
Prosecutor Ana Serban, on the other side, claimed Nygard was evasive and inconsistent on the evidence, and that his memory was faulty and selective.
Serban cited “remarkably similar accounts” from his five accusers about how they met Nygard, were invited to his office building, and “how he s**ually assaulted them in his private bedroom suite.”
“The similarities defy coincidence,” she said. “It’s a pattern of behavior.”
Testifying in his own defense, Nygard did not recall meeting or knowing four of his accusers, and insisted he never raped any of the five.
“The type of allegations that were said and were described is the type of conduct that I know that I have never done, I never would do,” he told the court, even while admitting that his memory had become “very fuzzy” with age.
Nygard, who created the corporation that would become Nygard International in 1967, has been detained since his arrest in 2020.
He now faces similar allegations in Quebec and Manitoba, as well as extradition to the United States, where he is suspected of s**ually assaulting hundreds of women and girls, as well as racketeering and trafficking.