In Toronto, the poignant testimony of the mother of the woman who accused Peter Nygard of raping her in 1989 corroborated her allegations on the twelfth day of the hearings. The 82-year-old Canadian fashion designer is accused of assaulting five women, including a teenager, from 1986 to 2005 in his former Toronto workshop.
The complainant's mother, whom we cannot name for fear of identifying the victim, testified by videoconference from her residence in Ottawa. She said she saw her daughter again one day after her stopover in Toronto in the winter of 1989.
At the time, the plaintiff was in California for work, but Peter Nygard called her mother because he wanted to contact his daughter about for possible employment at his company.
He was charming on the phone and told me my daughter was smart and lovely , recalls the 77-year-old, who was 42 at the time.
Her 21-year-old daughter was working in television at the time, but she also had a small fashion business.
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Peter Nygard, his lawyers and prosecutor Ana Serban at the lectern presenting his indictment to the jury at the start of the trial, September 26, 2023.
The mother explained that she never met Peter Nygard but that the fashion designer told her that he was very good friends with Walter Grego, the owner of the defunct Chez Henri club in Hull. /p>
She confirmed that her daughter was friends with Mr Grego and often frequented his establishment, which attracted celebrities from the capital in the late 1980s.
She had met Peter Nygard at a party there and she gave him our phone number, she said.
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Complainant No. 5 responds to prosecutor Neville Golwalla at the trial of Peter Nygard on October 16, 2023. She is accompanied by a therapy dog.
The septuagenarian has explained that she called her daughter at her hotel in Los Angeles and gave her Peter Nygard's number to contact him.
She wasn't very interested at the time, but I convinced her, because I thought he could help her career, she said. p>
The complainant's mother confirmed that Peter Nygard changed his daughter's itinerary to fly her to Toronto rather than in Ottawa, as originally planned.
My daughter called me after meeting her. Her voice had changed, it was no longer the same, she continued. She added that she then told her daughter to return to Ottawa.
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Peter Nygard listens to complainant No. 5 under the gaze of Justice Robert Goldstein of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
The two women saw each other the next day in a café. She looked gloomy and depressed, she recalled.
She explained that her daughter then revealed to her that Peter Nygard had locked her in a room and raped her.
I was terrified, I couldn't run away, she said, repeating her daughter's words 35 years earlier.
I couldn't believe my ears in the cafe, I was upset, she remembered, crying on screen.
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Peter Nygard's lawyer, Brian Greenspan, declined to cross-examine the mother of complainant No. 5.
Wracked by guilt, the woman said he regrets today having advised his daughter not to file a police report.
At the At the time, young girls could not compete with rich and powerful men, she repeated at court.
She admitted to suggesting her daughter keep quiet because she feared Peter Nygard would ruin her career if she reported him. I told her I was going to take good care of her, she concluded.
The Crown subsequently called the complainant's ex-husband to the witness stand, whom we cannot name either, but he contradicted the complainant without realizing it at the end of the his testimony.
The 60-year-old man claimed he began dating the complainant in September 1989 before marrying her .
The marriage only lasted a year because we didn't have many things in common, a – he said, specifying that they nevertheless remained in contact.
He admitted that he sent her a text message when police contacted him to verify the complainant's allegations to police in January 2021.
We agreed not to talk about the case so as not to make me appear biased at the trial, he continued.
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Me Greenspan cross-examines complainant no. 5 on October 17, 2023.
The man specified that the complainant had told him in their relationship, during a stay in Edmonton, that she had had a mishap with a fashion celebrity she had not identified at the time.
I was in the military, only 26 years old and knew nothing about women's clothing, he said.
He added that she told him that day that she had been to an interview for a job but it had gone badly. She told me about a hidden room on the top floor of a workshop, he remembers.
He understood that she had been assaulted but that the individual had mainly reprimanded her verbally in bed. I didn't really think it was rape, he stressed.
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Complainant No. 5 told the defense that Peter Nygard raped her in 1988 or 1989 in his former fashion workshop in Toronto.
To hearing the testimony of the sixty-year-old, we were able to understand that the meeting between Peter Nygard and the complainant was brutal and sinister. I was shocked because no one talked like that back then, he said.
He claimed that he saw Peter Nygard years later on television during a business trip on June 14, 2020 and that the report tipped him off. .
I sent him a text message with the letters PN and two question marks, he mentioned.
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Complainant #5 swore that the sexual relationship she had with Peter Nygard was not at all consensual and that he It was rape.
He explained that he contacted her that day because he had felt like he hadn't supported her when she revealed her secret to him in Edmonton.
I wanted to apologize because attitudes about rape had changed over time, he said.
He acknowledged telling her in 2020 that the experience would be very painful when she asked if she should report to the police.
I told her Mr. Nygard would hire excellent lawyers and they would destroy her if there was a trial, he said.
The man, however, clarified that he then encouraged her in January 2021 when he called her back to warn him that the police had contacted him to corroborate his statement. I thanked her on behalf of my two daughters, he said.
The defense, however, revealed contradictions in his cross-examination by having him reread his statement to the police in 2021.
The man had said to the police that his ex-wife had agreed to see Peter Nygard again to advance his career in the world of entertainment.
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Mr. Greenspan noted unfortunate contradictions in the statement of the ex-husband of complainant no. 5 to the police.
She told me said he had kissed her in the elevator when going up to her suite, he admitted. The complainant omitted this detail in her testimony.
He noted that she told him in Edmonton that she was wearing a skirt that evening. However, she said on Monday that she was wearing pants.
He claimed that she had also revealed to him that Peter Nygard had tried to kiss her again in the secret room but she had rebuffed his advances at first before accepting them.
No, she never told me that he overpowered her on the bed or abused her, he concluded.
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Peter Nygard and Mr. Greenspan listen to the Crown's response after the cross-examination of the ex-husband of Complainant No. 5.
Disconcerted, the Crown however reminded him in his right of reply that the complainant had not revealed to him in Edmonton all the details of the alleged assault.
She had a British accent, her speech was different from ours, but her story was heartbreaking, he explained.
Earlier in the morning, the Crown had clarified the chronology of events in the complainant's testimony thanks to the testimony of the owner of Chez Henri.
Walter Grego confirmed that the complainant first met Peter Nygard in June 1988 and not in 1987 as she had said.
Consequence: rape alleged occurred a few months later in 1989 and not in 1988 as she had also pointed out.
Teilor Stone has been a reporter on the news desk since 2013. Before that she wrote about young adolescence and family dynamics for Styles and was the legal affairs correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining Thesaxon , Teilor Stone worked as a staff writer at the Village Voice and a freelancer for Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Mirabella. To get in touch, contact me through my teilor@nizhtimes.com 1-800-268-7116
