A Winnipeg judge stayed sexual assault charges against Peter Nygård today
The victim went to police, but they destroyed the reports
Disgraced former fashion executive Peter Nygård is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after being convicted last year of sexually assaulting four women in his former Toronto business headquarters between the 1980s and the mid-2000s.
Today, Judge Mary Kate Harvie in Winnipeg stayed additional sexual assault and unlawful confinement charges against 84-year-old Nygård, relating to an alleged assault at a Winnipeg warehouse in 1993. Nygård’s lawyer argued that missing police documents restricted his right to a fair trial, and the judge agreed.
The complainant spoke to police twice back in 1993, but those interviews were said to be destroyed, potentially due to purging of police reports.
Related: Meet the lawyer representing a player at the centre of the Hockey Canada trial
According to the CBC, Harvie said it’s important that police not destroy files before they’re sufficiently assessed, especially in sexual assault cases, in which victims might wait years to come forward.
“This may mean significant changes are necessary to the categorization and storage of police reports, notebooks and statements. 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,” said Harvie.
Nygård is reported to have been delighted about today’s result, but he still faces more sexual assault charges in Quebec as well as possible extradition to the US on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
