“Peter Nygard is a sexual predator”: 11 years in prison for sexual assault against the former Finnish-Canadian fashion mogul

Peter Nygard au 24e gala annuel de visionnage des Oscars de la 2014 Night Of 100 Stars à Beverly Hills, en Californie. MAXPPP – Alpha Press

Former fashion mogul Peter Nygard was sentenced Monday in Toronto to 11 years in prison after being found guilty of sexually assaulting four women.

“Peter Nygard is a sexual predator,”, Superior Court Justice Robert Goldstein said. “He is also a Canadian success story gone terribly wrong”, he noted, adding that he “used his wealth and power to commit four sexual assaults”.

Decades of sex crimes

The prosecutor had asked for at least 15 years in prison for the 83-year-old Finnish-Canadian former businessman, who has been incarcerated since his arrest in 2020. The defence had asked for a six-year sentence, citing his advanced age and failing health.

The trial in Ontario Superior Court was the first in a series targeting Peter Nygard for sex crimes against numerous women in Canada and the United States over several decades.

In his verdict, the judge highlighted the intensity of “the violence, degradation and duration of his sexual assaults” but also “the manipulations used to bring the victims into (his) private apartment”.

He also noted that Peter Nygard, who was in the room and wearing a black hoodie and white visor, had not moderated his behaviour over the years.

"Piégées" in a room with a bed

Repeated several times, his sentence falls almost a year after he was found guilty in November 2023 of having taken advantage of his status as head of one of Canada's largest women's clothing manufacturers to sexually assault several women and a 16-year-old girl between 1988 and 2005.

A friend of Hollywood stars, traveling in a private jet adorned with his name in capital letters, and a fan of lavish parties organized in his immense residences in the Bahamas and Los Angeles, he had pleaded not guilty at the opening of his trial.

For several weeks, his victims said they had been "trapped" by Peter Nygard, finding themselves in a room with a bed, a bar and whose door, without a handle, was closed with a code.

The Peter Nygard case recalled that of Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier who committed suicide in 2019 in detention after being accused of maintaining a prostitution network composed, in large part, of minors.