A judge has stayed all charges in the Winnipeg sexual assault case against disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard.
The judge found his right to a fair trial was violated by police failing to retain records related to allegations stemming from the 1990s.
Nygard appeared via video link in a Winnipeg courtroom, where provincial court Judge Mary Kate Harvie read her decision Wednesday following arguments in September.
The complainant in the case, whose name has been protected under a publication ban, alleged Nygard sexually assaulted her at his Winnipeg warehouse in November 1993.
She spoke about it with police officers, including with North Vancouver RCMP.
The investigation was launched by Winnipeg police in 2020.
Nygard’s lawyer, Gerri Wiebe, filed a motion for a stay of the proceedings in September, arguing her client had been denied the right to a fair trial on the basis that officers who interviewed the woman in 1993 were unable to produce documentation of their exchanges.
Wiebe argued testimony from the complainant and the Vancouver RCMP officer was in no way an adequate substitute for missing documentation.
“The complainant here can say anything she wants to about what she did or didn’t tell police … and I have virtually nothing to challenge that with,” the lawyer said in September.
Nygard’s trial on the allegations had been scheduled for December.
He is already serving an 11-year prison sentence after he was found guilty in an Ontario court of four counts of sexual assault for offences from the 1980s to mid-2000s. He is appealing the conviction and sentence.
He also faces charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement related to allegations of events that took place from Nov. 1, 1997, to Nov. 15, 1998, in Montreal.
