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A Canadian judge on Monday sentenced disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard to 11 years in prison after the 83-year-old was found guilty last November of sexually assaulting three women and a 16-year-old girl.
“Peter Nygard is a sexual predator,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Goldstein said at sentencing, according to the Toronto Star. “He is also a Canadian success story gone very wrong.”
Nygard, wearing a black ski jacket with the hood pulled over his head, responded, “No, sir,” when Goldstein asked if he had anything to say.
Goldstein told Nygard, who is reportedly worth almost $1 billion, that he took his age and flagging health into account when determining his sentence, but that he had created his own troubles and felt immune to consequences, the CBC reported. The Finnish-born Nygard reportedly suffers from an enlarged prostate, Type 2 diabetes, light sensitivity, claustrophobia, and an allergy to polyester.
The Crown had asked for a sentence of 15 years; defense attorneys wanted six. With credit for time served, Nygard, who has been locked up at the Toronto South Detention Centre since his October 2021 arrest, will be eligible for release in just under seven years.
The attacks took place in a “secret” bedroom at Nygard’s Toronto headquarters, according to prosecutors. They said Nygard lured his victims there under false pretenses, occasionally drugging them, and overpowering them inside the penthouse lair — which reportedly did not have handles on the doors, which Nygard locked and unlocked with a keypad. His vile crimes occurred from the late 1980s to roughly 2005.
In opening arguments in September 2023, prosecutor Ana Serban described one incident in which she said Nygard invited a woman he had met on an airplane to come to his office for a job interview. When she arrived, Nygard coaxed her into his private bedroom, then overpowered her, pinning her down and ripping her shirt off with his teeth while he penetrated her digitally, according to Serban, who said Nygard only stopped when his next appointment arrived.
Another woman said Nygard raped her in the secret bedroom after they attended a Rolling Stones concert together, recalling Nygard’s demand that she make him a sandwich and how he threw a $100 bill at her when she left, The Canadian Press reported.
Nygard’s victims addressed the court in July, speaking about their ongoing trauma from the attacks. One woman said she had considered suicide in the aftermath.
In 2020, the NYPD and FBI searched Nygard’s Manhattan offices in a US-based sex trafficking investigation. Nygard continues to fight extradition to New York, where he is charged in federal court with conspiracy to commit racketeering, transportation of a minor for purposes of prostitution, and sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. Dozens of women who say they were victimized by Nygard have also signed onto a class-action lawsuit filed in New York, alleging the fallen fashion star raped them after plying them with drugs or alcohol.
Nygard, who insisted the allegations were the result of a frame-up by a billionaire neighbor of his, was ordered last year by a New York judge to pay that same neighbor more than $200 million for defamation over the claim.
