Winnipeg police’s purged evidence prompts Nygard lawyer to seek stay of charges

Sex charges against disgraced fashion mogul and convicted sex offender Peter Nygard should be stayed because evidence of the alleged victim’s original interaction with police nearly 30 years ago no longer exists, lawyers told a Winnipeg judge Monday.

Nygard, 83, is set to stand trial in December on charges he sexually assaulted and forcibly confined a then-20-year-old woman in 1993 at his former corporate headquarters in Winnipeg.

Court heard Winnipeg police visited the woman for a “wellness check” the day of the alleged assault after family members reported they could not reach her and was interviewed by RCMP after she returned home to Vancouver days later.

Records of the two meetings have since been destroyed, crippling Nygard’s ability to mount a full defence against the charges, said defence lawyer Gerri Wiebe, who argued the lost evidence constitutes “unacceptable negligence” by police.

“Determining the impact of lost evidence is always problematic because some speculation is inevitable, given the fact that you are evaluating something that is non-existent and unknown,” Wiebe told provincial court Judge Mary Kate Harvie.

In a statement by the alleged victim in 2020, she told Winnipeg police in 1993 “something along the lines of ‘I’m safe, I am fine, I will be fine,’ and let them go,” Wiebe said.

“Other than that, we have no other information about this interaction whatsoever,” Wiebe said. “Specifically, we don’t know who from the Winnipeg Police Service was dispatched. The complainant says there were two police officers and a social worker, which I think the Crown concedes is not likely, given the evidence of the practice of the Winnipeg Police Service at that time.”

Winnipeg Police Service said it believes written evidence of the wellness check was “purged, as per their policy,” but it is not clear when, Wiebe said.

A recent statement by a Vancouver RCMP officer recounting his 1993 interview with the woman included no verbatim quotes from the woman or specific details that could be put to her on cross-examination at trial, Wiebe said.

“For the purposes of cross-examination, (the officer’s) recount of what the complainant told him is essentially useless,” Wiebe said.

Nygard appeared via video from Ontario’s Bath Institution, where he is serving an 11-year sentence after being convicted last September of sexually assaulting four women at his Toronto corporate headquarters from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s.

Nygard sat in a wheelchair, grey stubble on his face and a ball cap covering his long hair.

This is not the first time Nygard has attempted to toss the case from court. Last spring, Wiebe argued a motion alleging former provincial attorney general Kelvin Goertzen had no grounds to seek a second opinion on the case from the Saskatchewan Public Prosecutions Service in November 2022, more than a year after the Manitoba Crown attorney’s office decided it would not pursue charges against Nygard.

“Determining the impact of lost evidence is always problematic because some speculation is inevitable.”

Wiebe called the Manitoba prosecution an abuse of process, alleging Goertzen was responding to media and political pressure when he made the decision to seek a second Crown opinion from out of province, a move not specifically sanctioned by government policy.

The woman at the centre of the Winnipeg charges was one of eight alleged sexual assault victims whose cases were investigated by city police and assessed by Manitoba Crown attorneys.

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In November 2022, then-Manitoba Liberal leader Dougald Lamont took the calls for a new investigation to the legislative assembly and organized a news conference with women who had accused Nygard of assault.

Two days later, Goertzen ordered a second opinion on the matter — a decision Wiebe said Goertzen himself described as “unprecedented” — and sent the case files to Saskatchewan prosecutors for review. That review resulted in Manitoba prosecutors authorizing charges involving one alleged victim.

Harvie ruled Goertzen’s actions did constitute an abuse of process, but staying the charges against him was not “an appropriate remedy.”

Nygard also faces charges in Quebec and extradition to the U.S., where he has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.

Every piece of reporting Dean produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.