Crown won’t appeal judge’s decision to stay Nygard’s Winnipeg sex assault charges

Saskatchewan Crown prosecutors have decided not to appeal a Manitoba judge’s decision to stay the charges in convicted sex offender Peter Nygard’s Winnipeg sexual assault case last month.

In a decision issued Oct. 8, provincial court Judge Mary Kate Harvie ruled the disgraced former fashion mogul’s right to a fair trial had been breached after old evidence in the case was lost.

Nygard, 84, had been set to stand trial in December on charges he sexually assaulted and forcibly confined a woman, who was then 20, in 1993 at his former corporate headquarters in Winnipeg.

The case was being handled by Crown prosecutors from Saskatchewan, after former attorney general Kelvin Goertzen sought an out-of-province review from the that province’s public prosecutions service.

Goertzen made the request after Manitoba’s prosecutions office declined to pursue charges against Nygard.

Prosecutors had until last Friday to file an appeal, but they determined it wouldn’t be appropriate in the circumstances.

“After careful review and consideration, public prosecutions has determined that an appeal would not be appropriate in this case,” Noel Busse, a spokesman for Saskatchewan’s Justice Ministry, said Monday.

“The Criminal Code only permits Crown appeals from legal errors. While the Crown argued for a different result, it did not find any legal errors upon which to base an appeal, and respects the decision made by the judge.”

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, court previously heard.

Records of the two meetings were later destroyed, crippling Nygard’s ability to mount a full defence, his lawyer Gerri 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, 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.

In June 2020, the woman provided a video statement to the Winnipeg Police Service, the only remaining evidence of the alleged assault. In the statement, she said she couldn’t recall all the statements she made to the Mountie in 1993, but said it included that she had been held against her will.

Harvie said in her decision that it is “critically important” that police take steps to ensure communications with victims not be purged from storage without a proper evaluation.

“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,” Harvie wrote in October.

Nygard is currently serving an 11-year sentence in an Ontario prison. He was convicted in September 2024 of sexually assaulting four women at his Toronto corporate headquarters from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s.

Nygard is appealing that conviction. He faces additional charges in Quebec, where trial dates are expected to be set next month, and extradition to the U.S., where he has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca