Peter Nygard sentenced to 11 years in prison for sexual assault

Convicted Fashion Mogul Peter Nygard Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison

On Monday, convicted fashion mogul Peter Nygard was sentenced to 11 years in prison for sexually assaulting several women inside a secret bedroom suite at his company’s Toronto-based offices.

An Ontario judge described Nygard as a “sexual predator” and a “Canadian success story gone very wrong” during a hearing in a Toronto courtroom.

Nygard, a Finnish-born mogul, was convicted in November on four counts of sexual assault. His family immigrated to Canada, where he built his affordable women’s clothing brand from a store in Winnipeg into a North American empire.

The victims of the assaults, which occurred over two decades, were as young as 16 years old.

Nygard, aged 83, would invite women to his custom-built office under various pretenses, such as tours or job interviews.

Prosecutors stated that he would then lure the women into his bedroom suite and assault them, sometimes using drugs and alcohol.

Nygard’s suite was described as having a large bed, a stone jacuzzi, a bar, and doors with automatic locks controlled by him.

Despite his reported net worth of $900 million in 2020, Nygard also faces civil and criminal charges in the United States.

He has been resisting extradition to the US since 2022, but a Manitoba court recently ordered him to surrender to face sex trafficking and racketeering charges.

In 2020, federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed an indictment against Nygard, accusing him of luring young women to his Bahamas estate with promises of modeling opportunities.

Several women, some as young as 14 or 15, have sued Nygard in New York, alleging that he raped them after giving them alcohol or drugs.

A class-action lawsuit involving 57 women, including 18 Canadians, claims that Nygard used violence, intimidation, and bribery to avoid accountability for decades.

Nygard denies all allegations and attributes them to a conspiracy stemming from a feud with a billionaire neighbor in the Bahamas.

Furthermore, a New York State court ordered Nygard to pay $203 million to his neighbor, billionaire Louis Bacon, for defamation.