Former Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard was found guilty of sexual assault by a Toronto jury Sunday.
After three days of deliberation in the six-week trial, 82-year-old Nygard was guilty of four counts of sexual assault in the case accusing him of attacking five victims, aged 16 to 28, between the 1980s and 2005.
Nygard, founder of the Canadian fashion company Nygard International that was once valued at $1 billion, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each sexual assault conviction.
Nygard is expected to be sentenced in Toronto later this month.
His conviction comes after decades of multiple ongoing cases accusing him of using his power and influence to sexually abuse young women and teenage girls.
From Forbes:
Canadian prosecutors accused Nygard of sexually assaulting the women by luring them, under the guise of job interviews or building tours, to his private office suite, allegedly equipped with a jacuzzi, bed, doors without handles and locks controlled by Nygard.
He claimed short-term memory loss prevented him from remembering key details throughout the trial, insisting he did not recognize all but one of the victims, and claiming records that may have helped him recall the time periods in question were destroyed in a fire and a hacking incident.
Nygard has faced sexual abuse allegations dating back to 1968, when a sex crime charge filed by Winnipeg police against him was dropped after the alleged victim refused to testify. Similarly, in 1980, he was charged with raping an 18-year-old who also declined to cooperate with law enforcement, so the the case was closed.
The FBI has investigated him at least three times since 2015 over allegations he ran a sex trafficking ring. He stepped down from Nygard International in 2020 amid an FBI probe, and the company filed for bankruptcy a month later.
Nygard’s son Kai Bickle detailed his father’s prolific history of sex abuse, calling him a “systematic monster” who used “jurisdictional loopholes” to avoid accountability in the Bahamas, where he had a palatial estate he called Nygard Cay.
“Most of this abuse happened in The Bahamas, just so you know,” he told reporters. “This is just Toronto’s version that qualified. We are dealing with a systematic monster who used his business talents for evil to prey on others and it’s a very good thing that justice was served here.”
Nygard will also be tried on sex crimes charges in Montreal and Winnipeg next year.
And after his Canadian trials conclude, Nygard is set to be extradited to New York to face a nine-count federal indictment on sex trafficking, racketeering and conspiracy, among other charges.
“In the US, prosecutors allege Nygard used company funds to host ‘pamper parties’ where girls were drugged and women assaulted if they didn’t comply with his sexual demands,” The Sun reported.
“They also claimed he paid from corporate accounts for victims’ plastic surgery and abortions – as well as child support for at least 10 kids he reportedly fathered with eight different women.”
Lisa Haba, a lawyer representing almost 60 women suing Nygard in the US, has previously said “Nygard is worse than [Jeffrey] Epstein.”
In addition to these accusations, Nygard was also known to have a fascination with transhumanism.
The former fashion mogual is on video with his former business partner Steve Powers talking about a company they created to replace DNA from white people inside the nucleus of eggs from African women to create what they call a genetically pure race.
Nygard also described how he wanted these black women to have abortions so he could use the fetal stem cells for “age-defying research.”
Similarly, deceased billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, in addition to his Caribbean island estate, also had a sprawling mansion in New Mexico he called “Zorro Ranch” which he planned to use as a human breeding farm with the aim of “seeding” the human race with his DNA.
“On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies, according to two award-winning scientists and an adviser to large companies and wealthy individuals, all of whom Mr. Epstein told about it,” The New York Times reported in 2019.
And like Epstein, Nygard was also pals with Prince Andrew, who toured his Bahamas estate in 2000, and rubbed shoulders with political leaders and Hollywood celebrities — even dining with the late Queen Elizabeth.