The hearing was meant to decide a prison sentence for a convicted rapist, Peter Nygard, the former Canadian fashion mogul. But for a woman who had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Nygard, being one of his victims had long made her life a prison.
The trauma caused by the attack in the late 1980s, when she was 21, irreparably stunted her life, the woman told a Toronto courtroom during Mr. Nygard’s two-day sentencing hearing that began in July and was postponed until Monday.
It shattered her career as a clothing designer and television presenter, caused debilitating health problems and left lasting psychological wounds, she said. “I live now still in a veil of sadness,” said the woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban. “It breaks my heart to reflect upon the derailment of my entire life.”
After listening to statements from victims and from Mr. Nygard’s defense, a judge sentenced Mr. Nygard to 11 years in prison for sexually assaulting four women, one of whom was a teenager at the time of the attack.
Because of the time he has spent in custody since his arrest, Mr. Nygard has about seven years remaining in his sentence and will be eligible for parole in about two years.
“Peter Nygard is a sexual predator,” said Justice Robert Goldstein of the Superior Court of Ontario, delivering his sentence before a full courtroom. “He is also a Canadian success story gone wrong.”
Mr. Nygard, 83, was brought into court in a wheelchair, an outgrown beard replacing his usually clean-shaven appearance. He wore a large puffer jacket, with a makeshift paper visor fastened to the lip of the hood to shield his light-sensitive eyes.
A jury convicted him in November of four counts of sexual assault, effectively closing the first chapter in the saga of his criminal proceedings in Canada and the United States.
He is also facing trials for sex crimes in Montreal and Winnipeg, followed by extradition to New York, where he has been charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and other crimes. His next trial is scheduled to start in January in Montreal.
Prosecutors in the Toronto trial argued that between the 1980s and 2005, Mr. Nygard lured four women, who were 16 to 28 years old at the time, to a bedroom suite during tours of his company’s downtown headquarters. He was acquitted of a sexual assault charge involving a fifth woman.
“This rape has tainted my life in many subversive ways,” said another victim, an actress. She told the court that the attack unraveled her career, mental health and relationships. “I did not live up to my full potential,” she said.
The sentencing was the coda to the staggering downfall of the Finnish-born executive, often touting his rags to riches story as a self-made Canadian immigrant who built a multinational women’s clothing brand, Nygard International, from scratch.
During his rise, he was crowned the “polyester king” in the Canadian media because he popularized a variety of the fabric. But Mr. Nygard developed allergies to the kind of polyester used in his jail linens, his lawyer Gerri Wiebe, told the court in July.
Ms. Wiebe submitted 17 reference letters written by former business associates, lawyers, a pastor and girlfriends of Mr. Nygard who vouched for his character and philanthropic work in breast cancer, the disease that afflicted his mother and sister.
Prosecutors argued that Mr. Nygard used his flashy lifestyle and fame to lure women to his headquarters and assault them. He wielded his influence and “manufactured the opportunity to take whatever he wanted from these women,” said Neville Golwalla, a prosecutor.
During the trial, Mr. Nygard testified in his own defense that he largely did not remember the women and that the attacks they accused him of were not compatible with his character or his typical behavior.
He was arrested in Winnipeg in December 2020 and has been in custody for almost four years, contributing to an overall decline in his health, according to his lawyers, who in court filings said that Mr. Nygard had lost 30 pounds, developed insomnia and was bedridden.
Mr. Nygard testified during the trial to being obsessed with health throughout his career and influencing people in his circle to do the same, even offering cash incentives to employees who quit drinking or smoking.
Concerns about his health — and Mr. Nygard’s claim that attending the sentencing in person rather than virtually would kill him — have contributed to slowing his legal proceedings.
Delays were also caused by Mr. Nygard’s twice replacing his legal team, after the lawyers requested to withdraw from the case over ethical concerns.
The reasons behind their requests are protected by client confidentiality rules, though Brian Greenspan, one of Canada’s best known defense lawyers who represented Mr. Nygard in the Toronto trial, told the court that their relationship became adversarial.
Justice Goldstein appeared to lose patience with the sentencing delays. “There will also be no adjournments relating to Mr. Nygard’s health unless he is in a coma,” Justice Goldstein said at a June court appearance. He drew attention to the extra care that court staff have afforded him throughout the trial, including special meals and transportation to court from his infirmary unit bed at a Toronto jail.
“Mr. Nygard received privileges and consideration that no other person that I have ever dealt with has received,” Justice Goldstein said.
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