A woman who was raped by former fashion mogul Peter Nygard decades ago told a Canadian court that the incident left her traumatised for years.
“It breaks my heart to reflect on the derailment of my life caused by this,” said the woman, who was assaulted by Nygard in 1989 when she was in her 20s.
Nygard, once the head of a lucrative global apparel empire, is being sentenced this week for sexually assaulting four women.
The 83-year-old was convicted last November by a Toronto jury, having denied the charges.
Nygard appeared in-person in a Toronto courtroom for the beginning of his sentencing hearing on Wednesday, and was wearing a black sweatshirt with its hood up, and a black puffer jacket overtop.
He wore a face-mask and what appeared to be a visor, and his face was barely visible.
His two-day sentencing, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, had been repeatedly pushed back, with two of his lawyers resigning over ethical concerns, causing delays.
Nygard listened silently as victim impact statements were read in court, including from three of his accusers who detailed how the assaults left them with severe depression and anxiety, and in some instances, derailed their careers.
“The actions that Nygard took have impacted my life in a debilitating way,” said one woman.
“I did not feel safe being seen. Therefore I did not trust men and did not engage in long-term relationships with anyone for my entire life,” she said.
“Now a 63-year-old woman, I’m deeply saddened by the lack of love in my life.”
The sentencing will not be the end of Nygard’s legal challenges. He faces separate sexual assault and sex trafficking charges in Montreal, Winnipeg and in the US.
He has denied any wrongdoing and the other charges have not been tested in court.
Nygard is accused of using his influence and wealth to systematically assault and traffic women in both the US and Canada over a number of decades, when he was at the helm Nygard International, his global clothing design and manufacturing business.
Over his six-week criminal trial in Toronto last autumn, prosecutors argued that Nygard – once estimated to be worth at least $700m (£542m) – used his “status” to assault five women in a series of incidents that occurred from the late 1980s to 2005.
Most of the women detailed similar stories, in which Nygard lured them with the promise of work or professional help in the fashion industry. Each of them were then invited separately to a tour by Nygard at his Toronto office that ended in his private bedroom suite.
One prosecutor described the room as having “a giant bed … and a bar and doors, doors with no handles and automatic locks controlled by Peter Nygard”.
Nygard then raped or sexually assaulted the women inside the bedroom, the court heard. The victims were aged 16 to 28 at the time.
On Wednesday, Crown prosecutor Neville Golwalla asked Toronto Superior Court Justice Robert Goldstein to sentence Nygard to a 15 years, which he said would take into account his crimes as well as time already served behind bars.
“It took decades for these women to get justice and for their experiences to be validated,” he added.
The court will hear from Nygard’s defence team later on Wednesday.
Nygard has been in custody since his arrest in late 2020. He has been held at an infirmary inside a Toronto detention center due to his declining health, the court heard.
During the Toronto trial, his defence lawyers argued that his accusers, who are also part of a US class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of his alleged victims, were motivated by financial gain.
Nygard also claimed during the trial that he did not recall four of the five women in the case, and that he would have never acted “in that kind of manner”.
A jury found him guilty on four counts and not guilty on a fifth count of sexual assault and on one count of forcible confinement.
Nygard will now face another sexual assault case in Montreal, where he has been charged with assaulting and forcibly confining a woman more than two decades ago.
A preliminary inquiry in that case is set to begin in January 2025.
Nygard is also facing charges in Winnipeg related to offences allegedly committed in 1993, involving a woman who was 20 years old at the time.
In that case, he is alleged to have held the woman captive and raped her after inviting her to a modeling job. He has denied the charges.
Once his criminal cases in Canada are completed, he is expected to be extradited to the US, where authorities claim he engaged in a “decades-long pattern of criminal conduct” involving at least a dozen victims across the globe.
The US Department of Justice charged him with sex trafficking and racketeering offenses and accused him of targeting “women and minor-aged girls who came from disadvantaged economic backgrounds or had a history of abuse”.
A separate class-action lawsuit has also been filed against him by 57 women in the US, though it was put on hold amid his criminal proceedings.
In 2020, Nygard stepped down as chairman of his firm shortly before it filed for bankruptcy after US authorities raided its New York headquarters.
