Former fashion mogul Peter Nygard, once the head of a prosperous global apparel empire, is set to be sentenced in a Canadian court this week for sexual assault. Convicted by a Toronto jury last November of assaulting four women, Nygard had denied the charges.
The upcoming sentencing will not conclude the 83-year-old’s legal troubles. He faces additional sexual assault and sex trafficking charges in Montreal, Winnipeg, and the US, all of which he has denied.
Nygard stands accused of leveraging his influence and wealth to systematically assault and traffic women in both countries over several decades. For years, he led an international clothing design, manufacturing, and supply business, Nygard International, headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada, with offices in New York City and California.
During his six-week criminal trial in Toronto last autumn, prosecutors argued that Nygard, once estimated to be worth at least $700 million (£542 million), used his “status” to assault five women in incidents spanning from the late 1980s to 2005. His defense lawyers contended that four of the five women, who are also part of a US class-action lawsuit 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, 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’s sentencing, scheduled to take place on Wednesday and Thursday, has been repeatedly pushed back, with two of his lawyers resigning over ethical concerns and causing delays.
His current lawyer, Gerri Wiebe, applied to delay sentencing again – once in June to get up to speed on Nygard’s case and again in July to gather more expert testimony on her client’s medical condition.
Nygard had previously applied for the remainder of his hearings to be virtual, saying his health was declining.
But during a remotely held hearing last Friday, Toronto Superior Court Justice Robert Goldstein said he “simply will not entertain” any further delays unless Nygard “is in a coma”.
Prosecutors in the Toronto case revealed that Peter Nygard lured victims, aged 16 to 28 at the time, to a private luxury bedroom located in his firm’s headquarters. One prosecutor described the room as having “a giant bed, a bar, and doors with no handles and automatic locks controlled by Peter Nygard.” Once the women were trapped in the room, Nygard allegedly assaulted them.
Nygard now faces another sexual assault case in Montreal, where he is charged with assaulting and forcibly confining a woman over two decades ago. A preliminary inquiry for that case is set to begin in January 2025.
Additionally, he is facing charges in Winnipeg related to offences allegedly committed in 1993, involving a 20-year-old woman.
In that instance, he is accused of holding the woman captive and raping her after inviting her to a modeling job. Nygard has denied these charges.
Following the completion of his criminal cases in Canada, Nygard is set to be extradited to the US. There, authorities allege he engaged in a “decades-long pattern of criminal conduct” involving at least a dozen victims worldwide. In December 2020, New York prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking and racketeering offenses.
The US Department of Justice accused him of targeting “women and minor-aged girls who came from disadvantaged economic backgrounds or had a history of abuse.”
They claimed that Nygard maintained close relationships with certain victims, whom he referred to as “girlfriends” or “assistants,” using them to recruit new women for him to exploit sexually.
A separate class-action lawsuit has been filed against him by 57 women in the US, though it has been put on hold due to his ongoing criminal proceedings. Nygard has been in custody in Canada since his arrest in Winnipeg in 2020.
In February of that year, he stepped down as chairman of his firm shortly before it filed for bankruptcy following a raid by US authorities on its New York headquarters.