Judge stays Manitoba charges against Nygard

WINNIPEG — Sex charges against former fashion mogul Peter Nygard were stayed in a Winnipeg courtroom Wednesday after the judge ruled the convicted sex offender’s right to a fair trial has been breached because of lost evidence.

“I am satisfied that (Nygard’s) right to a fair trial has been substantially prejudiced and will be further aggravated by allowing the trial to proceed,” provincial court Judge Mary Kate Harvie said.

“In balancing the interests of denouncing Charter breaches against the interest in having matters decided on the merits, I am satisfied that this is one of the ‘clearest of cases’ warranting a stay of proceedings,” she said.

Nygard appeared via video from Bath Institution in Ontario, where he is serving an 11-year sentence after he was convicted in September 2024 of sexually assaulting four women at his Toronto corporate headquarters from the late ’80s to the mid-2000s.

Nygard, 84, was seated in a wheelchair and wearing his customary dark glasses and ball cap. He did not appear at first to fully absorb Harvie’s ruling.

“So then we won?” he asked his lawyer, Gerri Wiebe, after court had closed. “The charges are dropped?”

Nygard had been set to stand trial in December on charges he sexually assaulted and forcibly confined a woman, who was then 20, at his former corporate headquarters in Winnipeg in 1993.

Court previously heard Winnipeg police visited the woman for a “wellness check” on the day of the alleged assault after family members reported they could not reach her, and she was interviewed by RCMP after she returned home to Vancouver days later. Records of the two meetings were later destroyed, crippling Nygard’s ability to mount a full defence, Wiebe told court last month. She argued the destruction of the evidence amounted to “unacceptable negligence.”

The Winnipeg Police Service believes written evidence of the wellness check was “purged, as per their policy,” but it is not clear when, Wiebe said, while a recent statement by a Vancouver RCMP officer recounting his 1993 interview with the woman included no verbatim quotes from her or specific details that could be put to her on cross-examination at trial.

In June 2020, the woman provided a video statement to the Winnipeg Police Service, the only remaining evidence of the alleged assault.

In her statement, the woman “candidly admits that she can’t recall everything she told (the RCMP officer in 1993) but does indicate that she told him that she ‘had been held against her will,’” Harvie said in a 41-page written decision. “While she was initially inclined to pursue the matter, she told WPS members that ‘the long and short of it is that I didn’t press charges.’”

People working within the justice system must recognize it may take years before sexual assault victims fully disclose details of an alleged assault, Harvie said.

“Recognizing that, it is critically important that police forces take appropriate steps to ensure that communications with victims, even those that may be incomplete, not be purged from a police information storage system without proper evaluation,” Harvie said.

“We live in a day and age where the storage of vast quantities of documents has never been easier. For the sake of victims of sexual violence and to ensure against wrongful convictions, no other alternative is acceptable.”

Wiebe applauded Harvie for making a “tough call in tough circumstances,” noting her ruling marked the second time the judge found there had been a breach of Nygard’s rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“Despite how unpopular a person might be or how difficult the allegations might be, the Charter is in place for a reason, and non-compliance with the Charter has to be remedied in the appropriate fashion,” Wiebe said outside court.

She previously argued a motion that alleged Kelvin Goertzen had no grounds to seek a second opinion on the case from the Saskatchewan Public Prosecutions Service in November 2022, when he was Manitoba’s attorney general. Goertzen took the step more than a year after the Manitoba Crown attorney’s office decided it would not pursue charges against Nygard.

Harvie previously ruled Goertzen’s order constituted an abuse of process, but staying the charges against Nygard at that time was not “an appropriate remedy.”

Nygard is appealing his Ontario conviction. He still faces charges in Quebec, with trial dates expected to be set in December, and extradition to the U.S., where he has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering.

The alleged victim in the Winnipeg case had a publication ban preventing the disclosure of her identity cancelled by the court. When contacted by phone Wednesday afternoon, the woman said she was still reviewing Harvie’s decision and was not yet prepared to comment.

» Winnipeg Free Press