Evil by Design: Exposing Peter Nygård (2022): Season 1, Episode 1 - Roots of Design - full transcript

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We love Nygård.

Peter Nygård, the man

behind a multi-million-dollar
fashion empire...

I've always loved
the fashion industry,

so it was an opportunity
to have a great career.

But when you're in the Nygård world,

you actually are
facing reality that there's

much more evil in this world
than you ever knew.

He put his hand over my mouth.



He said, "I'm not going to hurt you."

But he raped me.

This violent man is believed

to have raped and assaulted
more girls and women

than any other predator
I can think of.

He did horrific acts in his office,

on his plane.

And at his island.

I didn't try to stop him.

I didn't try to stop him.

It was devastating,
it was violent, it was awful.

It forever changed my life.

Let me be very clear.

The women that we know about
is the tip of the iceberg.



It became sort of this elaborate
spy novel that we fell into.

I said to myself, "No one's gonna
believe what's going on here."

A lot of the people we met were
frightened about being taken out.

We didn't fully appreciate
the danger we were in

because we didn't realize
the power he had.

It was really hard
to get people to talk to us.

He was gonna fight to the very end.

There was a tip
that was sent in to the Times

after the explosion
of "Me Too" stories.

My name's Catherine Porter. I'm
a journalist at the New York Times.

A colleague of mine
on the investigations desk

asked if I knew anything
about Peter Nygård.

It's hard not to be interested
in a story about Peter Nygård.

You just look at a photo of him
and you're intrigued right away.

So, you know, fashion guy.

The low-cut tee-shirts.

The long mane of hair.

And always traveling
in an entourage of younger...

much younger women.

The tip was that he was a predator
who was luring young women,

particularly in the Bahamas,
with parties,

but also promises
to work for his company.

And then he would rape them.

For this story,
you're really starting from scratch.

That means a lot of cold calling

and trying to find people
who might know, was it true?

This took a long time to unwrap.
It was not a straightforward story.

Let me look in your eyes
so I can see. Look in your eyes.

So you can see me. So, yeah.

Peter Nygård is
a blatantly successful entrepreneur.

He's made a religion
of winning in the marketplace.

If you really wanna be the best in
the world, that's all you can pursue.

Peter Nygård's the biggest name
in Canadian clothing you've heard of.

The story of Peter Nygård,

we now know,
starts with, you know, him

moving to Canada as a young child,
as an immigrant.

He was born in poverty, so he said,

and it seems to have been,
in Finland in 1941.

He said he grew up with, you know,
no electricity, no running water.

And then after going to school,
got into the apparel business

and was very good at it.

Nygård bought Tan-Jay 12 years ago.

He built it
from less than one million in sales

to 30 million this year.

He was called a "polyester phenom."

He became a guy who,
you know, targeted older women

and made them look younger
by the clothes that he made for them.

They told me that half the population
is under the age of 25.

Unless you're after this business,
you're not in this garment business.

And I sort of cleverly figured out

if half of them is under 25,
the other half must be over 25.

He's in the low fashion business.

He would make
polyester-style women's suits.

He just capitalized on that market
and did really well in it.

Nygård works
16-hour days as a routine

and expects all his senior employees
to do the same.

Meetings are
normally scheduled in the evenings.

Nygård travels at night so he
doesn't waste business hours flying.

His father
was an absolute perfectionist.

His perfectionism
went into Peter's brain.

He did everything a hundred per cent.

That quality gave him
a tremendous motivation.

So much motivation that he never
wanted to lose at anything.

Nygård presented himself
like a Hugh Hefner,

you know, Playboy style,
the Playboy house, right?

The fifth floor
at his new headquarters

will be devoted to entertaining,

with a built-in apartment
for his personal use,

complete with a sauna,
a retractable glass roof,

and glass walls.

And he had factories in Asia.

He had this compound in the Bahamas.
A house in LA.

A headquarters
in Times Square in New York.

In all of his places
where his offices are

he has his "passion pit,"
was what he would call it.

You'd go through a room and it
would be his bedroom with a fireplace

and a, you know, en suite Jacuzzi.

And a really big bed
with like fur carpets.

My mother's experience with my father
was that she felt

that he had lied and misled her
quite a bit in their relationship.

When he was off with business,
he was telling her

that he was just working.
Meanwhile, we find out that he had

extracurricular activities
going on with other women.

I think that people knew
that he was kinda creepy,

that there were
many young women around him,

but not necessarily
that any of them were saying

that they weren't there
because they wanted to.

All of Canada had awareness
of his playboy persona.

That's the lifestyle
that he put out there to the world.

That's what he built
his image around.

That's why he walks in
with two women on each side of him.

Exactly what everyone else saw is
what we saw, what his family saw.

And so it was never presented
as anything other than that.

They always seemed happy to be there.

And nothing out of the ordinary.

I do not remember when I first
became aware of Peter Nygård,

but it would have been '78 / '79

when I was 16 or 17,

you know, and was getting out
on the town a little bit in Winnipeg,

as one does when one is locked up
at a girls' school.

He was sort of a,
kind of a caricature to us

and we would all be seen with him,
dancing, and would dance with him.

I mean, everything in public
seemed harmless.

I didn't really have
any fears or cautions

so I guess, really, the short answer
is, I just knew nothing.

You know, if you have allegations
of rape, you obviously have to find

people who are victims,
who will come forward,

corroborating evidence they have.
Did they tell someone?

And then you're looking at patterns.

That whole process took months.

In fact, I've never had
a process like that in my career,

where getting people to come
on record or even talk to me at all

took so long, because of the fear
around the topic and the person.

But also, the twists and turns along
the way that we weren't expecting.

When I was hired, I was 24 years old.

I was a management trainee
for one of the major banks

and had a few positions
and I thought,

"I want to do
something a bit more exciting."

Everybody knew who Peter Nygård was
in Winnipeg.

You'd arrive at the airport
and the first thing you'd see

was a billboard lit up
with his face on it.

They were everywhere.

There was a mural
on the side of his building with him.

His face was as big as the building.

so I applied for a marketing job,
but when I was contacted,

the HR Manager said, "We don't think
you're qualified for that job,

but we think you'd be perfect
as Nygård's EA."

And I was like,
"Yeah, no I don't think so."

And they went,
"It's not a secretarial job.

We need someone
to really keep tabs on things

while he's outta town." So I agreed.

And I was all enthusiastic
and even the HR manager said to me,

"Oh, and Peter
has a place in the Bahamas.

Like, you could go there sometimes."

Like, oh, man.
That would have been a real treat.

Then the first week
before Peter came into town,

it was actually very pleasant.
People were very nice.

But the day that he was to arrive,

people were running around saying,

"Peter's coming,
Peter's coming today.

Peter's plane landed.
Oh, Peter's on his way."

And I'm looking around thinking,
"What is going on here?"

The whole atmosphere changed.

Winnipeg is not a big city.

There are only so many big jobs
to go around in Winnipeg,

and he had a lot of big jobs to offer
that paid well.

And he knew it, and he used that.

He curated
a very larger than life image,

and I recall this well.
My very first meeting with him,

one of the first things
that he said to me was,

"I'm famous. People are going
to ask you questions about me.

You must always say good things.
Always.

Never say anything bad.
Do you understand?"

And so the first thing
going through my mind was,

"How many bad things
are gonna happen here," right?

Why do you have
an opposite fucking dialogue?

VOICE OF PETER NYGÅRD

It's completely reversed this time.
Why is it always the opposite?

Yelling, screaming and swearing.

That's just Peter.

You don't seem to know fuck all...

or care to find out.

When you do know it,

you don't seem
to want to tell me about it.

It was very unnerving to me.
That's not my temperament.

I'm on board. I'm a team member.
But don't yell at me.

I was a nervous wreck.

I'd never had
any experience like that in my life.

I don't give a fuck.

You run
with your fucking fast as hell

and you run
instead of walking like an asshole

with a dick up your ass.

When I was working for him
at the distribution center,

I was 21 years old.

And I started to experience the...

I guess you would say
high standards that he had.

And if you didn't meet
those standards,

then you would be on the receiving
end of what now would be referred to

as the verbal abuse.

So there was a lot of turnover
always at Nygård.

We had to sign in every day

and if we signed in a minute late,
you would get reprimanded,

and that would be
taken off your bonus.

And, also, the emails
had to be created in a certain way

that was acceptable to him.

You could not use
any emotions in your emails.

If you didn't write
the email properly,

you'd got dinged on your bonus.

And there's cameras everywhere,

so they could watch you.

He would have
all his suppliers come into town

and the events would be
a dinner and a dance,

but we weren't allowed
to bring our spouses,

we were expected
to dance with the suppliers.

And that to me, was unacceptable.

I spent many trips in Winnipeg,

meeting with people

who worked in his company,
who knew him.

Almost everyone who we talked to,
they would say

that his work environment was

very pressurized, stressful.

Brought people to tears.

But also,
just he's a very intimidating man.

He has anger,
I would say, quite clearly.

Rage.

Winnipeg Free Press
We're part of you

In 1996, we had a call to the office,

and it was a group of women

who had worked at Nygård
International here in Winnipeg.

From their perspective,

the man that ran Nygård International
really was

something that people
should know more about,

especially when it came to the issue
of sexual harassment.

He called me into his office,

and I opened that big door.

And there he was,

sitting on the toilet
with his pants down.

Because he had
the bathroom door open.

And I... You know, you're stunned.

You don't even know how to react.

As far as Nygård was concerned,

I think it was
pretty much the first time

that anybody went public
and put their names to it,

and said, "Here's the person he is,

and he's not getting away with it
anymore."

It was his inappropriate touching,

brushing up against them, touching
them, staring at their breasts.

And it wasn't uncommon for him to,
be walking around in his office,

partially clad or in his bathrobe,
with his bathrobe open.

Some of the women I talked to
talked about,

you know, him sitting there
and fondling himself.

He had a meeting in his office
with his executives

and he was sitting behind this big,
wooden desk.

And everyone else
was on the other side of the desk.

So he called me in
and I was standing beside him,

and he asked me a question,
and I started to explain,

and all of a sudden, I felt
his foot going up my inner thigh.

But I glanced over to him

and he just had
this little smirk on his face, right?

Like, you know,
"You know who's boss here?"

I just felt personally threatened.

It was a Saturday Special, as we say.

It was the front page and then
a couple of pages inside.

When I got to work
on the Monday morning,

my voicemail was full.

Lots of women, primarily
former employees, wanting to talk.

We were threatened with lawsuits.

They did serve notice.

They served us papers.
I was served myself.

I was told that this was defamation

and, as we all know, there's
this thing called "libel chill"

in which people with money

can get things tied up
in court for a very long time.

It is a legitimate recourse for
people who feel they were wronged.

It's also a tactic.

They did a pretty hard-hitting
news story that revealed quite a bit.

But it didn't have rape involved.

They had follow-ups coming in
and it was shut down.

And why was it shut down?

He was very happy to spend,
and I've heard him say this,

he's happy to spend 500,000
to drag out a lawsuit

to make you spend 100,000,
or 200,000, or 50,000

that he knows you don't have,
and basically ruin your life.

He's happy to do it.
And it silences you.

Peter had this extraordinary
motivation to be great.

And so it worked. He got to be great.

But when your masculinity
is based on that,

you have to prove it every day,

since you don't believe it and
you think no one else believes it,

you gotta prove it, every day.

He would fight to the death to win.

HARD WORK,
BUSINESS SAVVY SPELL SUCCESS

There were a lot more stories
to be told

and I was busy writing those stories.

They scratched the surface.

There was lots of stuff oozing up.

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

There were stories prepared
that could have run and they didn't.

Those stories didn't run.

It's distressing.
I gotta say, I mean,

I'm talking and thinking about
over 40 years of things

that I followed and you're just going

"How come he's treated so differently
than everybody else?"

I was hired as the recruitment
and retention manager

for Nygård International
in October of 2006.

All kind
of like mid to low market stuff,

fast-to-market stuff,
but at a very large scale.

And the company
was doing somewhere in around

about 400-million in revenue a year.

So it wasn't insignificant.

I didn't realize
how complex the business was.

It was fast paced,
and then I got to go to New York

and I started recruiting,
you know, designers there,

and all these sorts of things.

And that was fun, you know?

And, then, like the feedback
started coming back about

the things, you know, he was doing.

As a recruiter, I like to think that

I can use my position
to improve people's lives,

not make them worse.

You guys can't just throw
this shit around as you see fit.

You do not have
any fucking taste at all.

None of you have any fucking taste,
you don't see any of this.

So if you don't see it, don't start
pretending that you see it.

He did horrific acts

in his office, at his business,
at his island, on his plane.

Wherever this man went,
it was destructive behavior.

So he always had new stores.

Like we did
the Kenaston grand opening.

We did the Broadway grand opening.

And what happened on that trip,
was the game changer for me.

Now, Mr. Nygård has something
that he calls a "sizzle reel,"

where he takes the launch,
drops it to DVD

and it gets couriered out
to all of the stores the next day.

Right after the fashion show,
that's got to happen.

And we need to get it to his plane.

So now we're entering onto the plane.

And this is a really large,
older jumbo jet.

We walk into the plane
and there's like a dance floor

and a stripper pole,
and off on the corner is a bed.

And then there's Mr. Nygård's room.

And on this bed are young models.

I'm so horrified
and repulsed that there's...

there was probably four or five girls
on this king-size bed

giggling and laughing.

And waiting their turn to go talk
to Mr. Nygård in the bedroom.

These are models.
They think this is their big break.

That's no big break.

And I got back to the hotel room

and I was really

sick to my stomach.

Repulsed.

And felt ill, to be honest.

And I called my husband and I said

"I'm quitting my job
and I'm flying home."

Brenda Bourns wouldn't go
on the record for me.

I went to Winnipeg. She refused
to let me come to her house.

If I see something wrong,
I'm going to speak up.

But I had signed an NDA.
I was scared silent.

I was young, I had a young family.
It was that Mama Bear protective mode

of "I need to protect my family.

I can't go up against a billionaire."

Not a millionaire, a billionaire.

"And I can't do something that will

hurt my family in the long run,
and those that I love."

So I stayed silent.

There's many reasons why people
don't want to bring this up.

It's often fear of litigation against
a guy who has lots of more money.

I have guilt that I didn't speak up
years ago.

I finally found my voice and thought,
"No. I do have things I can share.

I do have DVDs. Here's my story."

If it can help someone
in any way, shape or form,

I'm not scared anymore.

I met her at like a strip mall.

We had a drink and she
agreed to give me just, you know,

huge packages
of just his press stuff.

So with that, you could start
sort of learning a lot.

And so the deeper we got,

the more elaborate we realized
the system was.

I can't remember the author's name,
but the book

"Heart of Darkness,"
which "Apocalypse Now" was based on.

They're going down the river
and things get weirder and weirder.

And that's kind of what it was like.

Like weirder and, you know,
more sinister.

And then when I went to the Bahamas,
that was it.

My name is Michelle May.

I was basically in charge
of the Communication Center

at Nygård Cay.

It was 2004,
summer of 2004.

Well, after my interview
with Mr. Nygård

it didn't take that long
for them to make an offer.

I was gonna take over as manager
of the Communication Center,

and my husband would have full rein
of the resort

in terms of operations.

That first day
when we arrived in Nassau,

there was a car waiting to pick us up

and the drive
from the airport to Lyford Cay,

which is actually a isthmus

where, at the very tip is Nygård Cay.

It was a lovely
long and winding road through

beautiful landscaping and wonderful
mansions of the rich and famous.

So, yes, it was
quite an awesome experience.

To reach Nygård Cay,

at the very tip
of this gated community,

was another gate.

And then across the top
was the sign "Nygård Cay."

It looked like the entrance
to Jurassic Park.

And then, of course, when you
opened up the gates what inside...

You know,
words just doesn't do it justice.

He called it
the "Eighth Wonder of the World."

It reminded me
a bit of like a Wonderland

or some kind of like place
that you go to

to spend a day with rides and things,

because it was
really like over the top.

When it came to what ultimately
would be my number one job,

and that was to solicit, by calling

young ladies, locally,
to come to the pamper parties.

The pamper parties started
originally when I would spoil

my own staff,
I wanted to give them a massage,

and a pedicure, etcetera,
on every Sunday.

But as we started
inviting other friends,

it grew and grew and grew
and it became, 20 years ago,

it had already started to become
a normal, most famous party here.

As the days went by,

leading up to that first pamper party
that I ever participated in,

I was given a list.

My list was over a hundred girls.

If we called about 300 people,
at least a hundred would show up.

So it was a big thing.

I mean, this was
a huge undertaking every week.

You were actually inviting
young ladies to come

and be prospective models
for his ready-to-wear line.

Whether it was gonna be
in print media,

or runway modeling or whatever,

they were from what we say on the
island as "from the villages,"

the different villages.

I was between the ages...
late 16, early 17.

I was working at a bar

and these ladies were outside,
downstairs in the parking lot

and they was handing out fliers,

inviting people to go to
a pamper party.

But she was just explaining like
this was like a mansion and this guy,

host these pamper parties where you
could get free manicure or pedicures.

Free food. Free drinks and...

I mean, the way
she described the place it sound fun.

Most of them
were from lower-income families,

so I'm believing hook, line
and sinker, that this... you know?

I'm participating and helping him
select the next top model, you know?

Who wants to be pampered more

than people
who have never experienced that,

who have never been to a spa,
who have never had wine and cheese

and all these kinds of things?
It's very appealing.

It sounds like a relaxing affair.

You can rub shoulders
with different people,

who are accustomed
to this lifestyle,

you can pretend to be accustomed
to this lifestyle, too, and fit in.

You know, that's attractive.

Little did I know until that Sunday,
this was not a model search at all.

Not at all.

As we interviewed people, we realized

he had this system,
particularly around pamper parties.

When we entered the gate, we have to
stop at the security check booth.

There's a security booth house
at the front.

They stop you.
They ask for your name.

Take a photo of you and they say that
it's just to keep on record for

later purposes in case
they having the next pamper party

or an event
and they wanted to invite you,

they want to see what you look like.

Then once we got through
the personal data,

then we got into
the physical characteristics.

So we basically had to put the
weight, the height, the size dress,

hair color, eye color, everything.
And then we had the picture.

Then we would take that,

and we would scan it
and send it up to Mr. Nygård.

And he's rating them A, B, C,
and bringing them back down.

And there's cameras everywhere.

So everything was very detailed.
Everything was very systematic.

Food, drinks, karaoke machine.

Hot tub, club.

It was, like, what a young person
would want or enjoy

or find fun, fascinating,
anything good in that moment.

That sounds really awesome.

Like I'm super in.
I would be super in.

It wouldn't be much of a hard sell
for most people to want to go.

But there was plenty of liquor
flowing and that was the thing

and then eventually they would end up
in the karaoke area

where they'd have a karaoke contest,
and then eventually in the nightclub.

And when the disco opens
and everybody in the disco drinking,

dancing, that's when he appears.

Peter's in the house.

When you go to a party at Nygård Cay,
you see Peter by during the night.

He stood out.

First of all, he really stood out
to everybody in the room because...

he was the only person
that looked like him.

I mean everybody else female,

and then this white guy come out
with long, straggly hair and...

he wasn't dressed like he had money,

but when he come out,
you knew that that was him.

At the end of the night, Nygård
would pick who he would like to bed

and he picked of the litter.
That's what it was.

He just take your hand
and walk you to his room.

I've never seen Peter have
a conversation with someone saying,

"I like you. Would you like
to spend the night with me?" Never.

Never.

He was on a shopping tour.
Oh, yes. Yes. He was.

I've been to wild parties
and stuff before, you know?

I've been a musician
and I've toured across the country.

I've seen a lot of things.
But nothing like that.

Like it was just depraved.

I was in the night club.

He called me over to him and...

he grabbed this women
and pulled her top up in front of me,

and shook her breasts in my face,

and stuck his hand
down the front of her pants.

And told me that he'd been
taking care of her since she was 17.

FUCK BUDDY

I was like, okay. I mean,

"Okay, Dana. I know you need to work,
but you can't...

You can't remain a part of this."

That I realized it was like, "No.
Somebody's gotta dig in their heels.

Somebody's gotta
stand up to this bullshit."

I work for the CBC, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation.

I'm a producer with The Fifth Estate,

our investigative
current affairs program.

In 2008, I was working in Winnipeg,

and a colleague of mine
came to talk to me one day

and he said, "Look. I've just gotten
this tip. I have a friend,

a mutual friend,
and he works for Peter Nygård,

and I can make the introduction."
And that was Dana Neal.

I just started talking
and he just asked questions.

And a lot of the time
like he was just like...

Agape, like just...

He talked about
people crying in his office

and, you know, not wanting
to go on trips with Peter Nygård

because about sexual harassment
type allegations.

And he talked about
being in the Bahamas.

There was definitely enough smoke

at that point for us to know
there must be more to it

and that we had to dig.

The more those weeks passed,

the more you see.
And then the more you realize

that there's even more
sinister things that are going on,

than even plying the young ladies
with alcohol and, you know...

And this was just a pattern,
it was just a pattern.

It was hard because morally you knew

that what was going on was wrong
and you want to do something.

But it was more upsetting

because you were
powerless to do anything.

We were living on the compound
and he took our passports.

And just something in my gut says,
"This is not right.

Why would he need
my physical passport?"

He took everyone's passports.
All of the workers.

Left me in a very vulnerable position
and I knew it.

After that first week I was like,
"We gotta get out of here."

But then,
how do we get off the compound?

It's a really scary place to be.

You're in the middle of nowhere.
It's at the end of this cay.

It's a big, scary looking gate
with big spikes coming out of it.

It's hard to get in and out of there.

That front gate...

And we weren't allowed
to open the gate

unless he gave us permission.

Only certain people knew the code,
and I never got it.

I never got the code.

So once you're inside the compound,

you're not leaving the compound
unless Nygård allows you out.

It was a couple of weeks before he
trusted us to leave the property.

We went to the US Embassy
and talked to a representative there.

And she said,
"You gotta get your passport."

It took a lot of planning to escape

and it had to be very methodical
and undercover.

And when he was around, you
had to pretend everything was fine.

That you're okay.

One of the young ladies
in the Communication Center

decided to help.

She gave us our passport.

But she was afraid
to open up the gate.

I mean, we had
all of these other employees

that he had descend on us
and we're like, "No, we're leaving."

And we didn't have
much time to leave before he...

Mr. Nygård would find out
that we were leaving.

My husband just decided
to climb that gate.

He knew the code from the outside.

He came back. I jumped
in the truck and he sped off.

We escaped to the airport.

And then we flew back to Florida.

Michelle May came to us

and the work environment
that they were exposed to

when they were working there,
the sexualized atmosphere,

wasn't what they signed up for.

The more we talked
and the more we read

and understood her case,

the more important
we realized she was.

We spent a year working on the story,
or more.

And there were bizarre things

that happened during
the gathering process, for sure.

I would spend hours
or days on the phone with someone

and then we'd get a letter from them
a few days later saying,

"Actually, Peter Nygård's
an amazing guy, nothing to see here."

That happened over and over again.

It wasn't long into that process Dana
started to get push back at work.

And I don't know that we even know,
to this day, how they found out,

how Nygård's senior people found out
that they were talking to us.

I'm positive that my email,
my phone, my voicemail...

like all of it
had to have been hacked.

Without a doubt.

There's just no other way,

because there was nobody else
that knew, that was in the know.

I mean, it really freaked us out.

I wasn't sleeping well.
I was just worried.

We didn't know
what was gonna come next.

Yeah, it was scary. It got worse.

So the story went to air. April 2010.

On this edition of The Fifth Estate,

think your boss is difficult?

Think again.

We showed that he was a boss

who would yell and scream at you
for hours.

He was a boss who would demand

whatever he wanted,
whenever he wanted, at any cost.

That he was a boss who would
sexually harass his employees.

And then there was quickly
a defamation lawsuit,

a libel lawsuit next,

and then the next phase

was a decade
we were defending ourselves

and defending that original story.

And that lasted for a decade.

Nygård has a history of impunity.

He does what he wants because he
has money and he has lawyers

that will go to court forever.

I did follow the case
with CBC quite closely.

I even went to court once
to watch the proceedings,

and that had gone on
for years and years.

It went on for so long,
in so many different ways,

that it just became normal.

Like it just became,

"All kinds of weird and crazy things
are gonna happen.

And that's just what happens
when you take on Peter Nygård."

I always say, what I went through
for those few months was horrible...

but what came after... was worse.

He actually sued me in the Bahamas
for breach of contract.

So I won... I shouldn't say I won
my case. Technically, we settled.

But the case was so complex,

all that people knew was that
I did something bad, you know?

He would talk about it as if I was
convicted of something horrendous,

and so each island
and each employer that I went to,

that's the case he presented.
He reached out to my employers

or my prospective employers
to damage...

me personally and professionally.

I just wanted someone to believe
what was going on there.

But no one listened. Not really.

No one wins against Peter Nygård.
No one.

Quite honestly,
I didn't know what I was getting into

and neither did the lawyers
that I dealt with.

They were all, "He'll just...
he'll give it up, don't..."

And I kept saying to them,
"No, he's not.

He's not gonna give this up.

He's going to try to punish me
for the rest of my life."

That's what he tried to do.

It absolutely threw my career into
limbo for about three years,

because the local community didn't
know what to make of everything.

And when you're in HR,
you know, breaking confidentiality

is a really big faux pas.

I re-mortgaged my house
paid my legal bills

which I'll still be paying,
for years.

He's incredibly litigious.

On top of, "Why the hell
were you going to a party?"

"You had no reason to go there
and how will you get home?

Why didn't you tell your mother?"

All the things that every woman
who's been in this thing

asks herself, anyway.

So that has its basis.

It wasn't surprising that
many of them hadn't said anything.

And so how do you corroborate
people's stories

of rape when they happened,
in a bedroom, in a private bedroom?

We just developed
just huge lists of names,

literally cold called many people,

and then through each person,
as it works with a journalist,

"Who else should I talk to?
Who else would know something?"

We interviewed all of them,
many times.

And then you would hear
the same kind of pattern,

and then did they tell anyone?

One of the victims finally allowed us
to use her name

and this woman, Jonna,
said that she had been on a trip

with him to the Far East and had
had the bridal suite in a hotel,

that had adjoining doors,
but she was told they were locked.

BLANCA PARCOURS DAY SET

TAN JAY

I was hired in January, '80,

and I didn't see Nygård
until sometime in February,

where he announced...

that he was going to take me
on a trip to the Far East.

I was put on a pedestal like I was
something fantastic from Denmark,

and I was good at designing
and it made me feel comfortable.

The manager of the Ritz
took me to my room.

That was on the top floor.
And a huge room.

And I was just a country girl
still at that time.

There was chocolates
and stationary with my name on it

and one room
connected to another room

and fruit...
and I'd never seen anything like it.

About 1:30,

and I know the time because there was
a clock with numbers on it,

there was somebody in my bed.

And I woke up
and I saw it was Nygård,

and I was about to say something
and he put his hand over my mouth.

He said, "Just don't worry.

You're a nice girl,
and I'm not going to hurt you and..."

Yeah. But he raped me.

It probably was
maybe six months after I left

that she phoned me
and told me what happened,

told me about the rape in Asia.

She needed a lot of support.

And she never found
another job in Winnipeg.

You know, it was really very sad.
She ended up going back to Denmark.

She said she was fired
and she had raised the issue, then,

and they had threatened
to go to a lawyer

and she said
and had a letter that showed

that she had been given money,
like hush money.

Then you're looking at patterns.

And we started looking through
Nygård's history in the courts.

There were cases
that had dropped in California.

A rape charge
in Winnipeg was dropped

because the complainant
refused to take the stand.

I think Nygård's ability to exploit

and cause
considerable harm to people,

to women and girls in particular,
is very much dependent on his status.

People are seeing him
as someone with money,

someone of status,
someone who has something to offer.

And this goes back
to the power dynamic.

You know, he held
a lot of power as someone

who had financial resources,

someone who could actually
advance people's careers

in modeling and fashion
if he really wanted to.

And a lot of predators use that.

If you spoke up and you said,

"I was raped or I was assaulted
or this guy's a bad person,"

he can then sue you for defamation

and his whole strategy was
to drag out lawsuits,

drain you of your time,
drain you of your money,

because he could afford to.

Nygård traditionally
was able to clean up any mess he had

because he had enough money
to sue people

and drag out court cases
for a long period of time.

But in the Bahamas,
he finally pissed off someone

who had
twice as much money and patience,

and also a big enough ego
to see it through.

The dispute between the two parties

was being taken
to another sort of level, really.

He felt there was
a murder-for-hire plot against him.

THE PRODUCERS
CONTACTED MR. NYGÅRD'S REPRESENTATIVE

IN THE COURSE
OF PRODUCING THIS PROGRAM.

THEY DECLINED TO PARTICIPATE
AND ADVISED

THAT "MR. NYGÅRD CATEGORICALLY DENIES
ALL ALLEGATIONS OF WRONGDOING."