Hours of behind-the-scenes video shot by a whistleblower show former Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard, who is alleged to have abused women and girls for decades, screaming at his employees and approaching a 16-year-old girl at the London Olympics.
Nygard is in a Winnipeg court today, arguing to be released on bail from jail, where he has been held since his arrest last month.
Stephen Feralio was hired as Nygard’s personal videographer in 2011. He spent the next three years documenting Nygard.
“When I first was hired, Nygard told me that the reason why Jesus is so popular is because he had a good PR team. My job was to film literally everything,” Feralio told CBC News in an interview.
Feralio, who was based in Los Angeles when he worked for Nygard, came forward and shared the video with CBC as part of an investigation into Nygard by The Fifth Estate and the podcast, Evil By Design.
“If I don’t expose him, he’s going to get away with all the things that he’s been doing,” Feralio said.
Feralio reviews video he filmed of Nygard as his personal videographer. (Stephen Feralio)
Nygard was arrested in Winnipeg in December on an extradition warrant. U.S. authorities accuse him of racketeering, sex trafficking and sexual assault involving “dozens” of victims.
More than 80 women accuse Nygard of rape or sexual assault going back four decades. Fifty-seven are part of a separate class-action lawsuit launched in New York in February 2020.
Nygard denies the charges against him and says they are all lies as part of a conspiracy meant to destroy his reputation spearheaded by his former neighbour in the Bahamas, billionaire Louis Bacon.
Several videos shared with CBC document what Nygard called pamper parties. Every Sunday for years, Nygard would host parties in the Bahamas or Los Angeles. Young women and girls were invited for what Nygard said was a day involving fun on the beach, food and dancing.
According to the U.S. indictment, Nygard recruited victims at pamper parties.
Feralio was hired as Nygard’s personal videographer in 2011 and spent three years documenting Nygard’s life. (Submitted by Stephen Feralio)
“Nygard would just come down and choose a girl. Usually they would be drunk,” said Feralio, who filmed several of his pamper parties.
“He would be grabbing them, dancing with them. And then at the end of the night, he would give me the signal and that meant stop filming,” he said. “And he would go upstairs to the room sometimes with two or three or more girls.”
Feralio also travelled with Nygard, documenting life on his private Boeing 727 airplane.
“So life on the plane, there’s food and then there’s poker and then there is karaoke and then there is maybe a movie. And then there’s drinking and dancing. And, you know, Nygard had a bed on the plane, and so he would have sex with the girls up in the front of the plane.”
One day in 2012, Feralio said, he filmed a party on the plane that included a 17-year-old dancing along with several other young women.
“[They are] all dancing on the stripper pole on the plane,” said Feralio, pointing to the teen.
WATCH | Videographer shows a party on Nygard’s plane:
Videographer Stephen Feralio travelled with Nygard, documenting life on his private 727 airplane. One day in 2012, Feralio said, he filmed a party on the plane that included a 17-year-old girl dancing and drinking alcohol along with several other young women. 0:23
Feralio said the 17-year-old travelled with Nygard, becoming one of the women he referred to as his “girlfriends.”
According to the U.S. indictment, women and girls known as Nygard’s “girlfriends” were often victims of his alleged assaults.
“Nygard maintained control over his victims through threats, promises to grant or withhold modelling opportunities and other career advancement, granting and withholding financial support and other coercive means,” the indictment said.
Feralio documented many interactions between Nygard and his “girlfriends.”
“They were around when Nygard needed sex,” said Feralio.
“They would accompany Nygard to dinner. They would be parading in during the meetings. Nygard would call them the girlfriends.”
Entering a hotel suite
Another video shows Nygard and several women walking into a hotel suite in Las Vegas.
“[Nygard] motions to the room and he says: ‘This is where we sin. This is our sin bin,’ ” Feralio said.
At one point, Nygard appears to lose track of how many women are travelling with him.
“You’re all going to stay in this suite, it’s so big, so we’ve got…. You guys are with me. How many girls we got? Is there one missing?”
“No, no, you two in that room, we three here,” one woman replies.
“Oh, I thought we had one extra,” Nygard says.
WATCH | Videographer shows how Nygard lost track of how many women were travelling with him:
A video captured by Stephen Feralio shows Nygard and several women walking into a hotel suite in Las Vegas. At one point, Nygard appears to lose track of how many women are travelling with him. 0:32
The U.S. indictment alleges Nygard had an elaborate and extensive system for recruiting young women and girls to victimize.
“To recruit victims, Peter Nygard … and others known and unknown used a network of trusted associates, ‘girlfriends’ and Nygard Group employees.”
One video shows Nygard meeting a young woman.
Feralio was filming when Nygard travelled to the Summer Olympics in London in 2012. In the video, Nygard and one of the women travelling with him can be seen approaching a 16-year-old athlete.
“Just to be here at the Olympics and to be running, good for you, and at 16 yet,” Nygard can be heard saying to the teenage girl, while he examines her Olympic credentials.
“Get her … number,” he says to the woman he is travelling with. “Her cell number or something. Two phone numbers. I don’t want to lose her now that I’ve found her.”
WATCH | Videographer shows how Nygard would approach young women:
Stephen Feralio was filming when Nygard travelled to the Olympics in London in 2012. In the video, Nygard and one of the women travelling with him can be seen approaching a 16-year-old athlete. Feralio said the video shows what he describes as a typical effort to recruit a young woman for Nygard. 0:34
Feralio said the video shows what he describes as a typical effort to recruit a young woman for Nygard.
“Part of what educates this … in the past, girls have said, ‘I found somebody else so that I don’t have to sleep with Nygard tonight.'”
Other videos show Nygard yelling at his employees.
“Some of these [videos] are kind of more difficult for me to watch,” Feralio said.
One video shows Nygard screaming at someone who appears to be a male employee or contractor in the Bahamas. Another shows Nygard yelling at his staff in an airport. Nygard can be heard saying: “You’re not following my law.”
WATCH | Videographer shows how Nygard would yell at employees:
Stephen Feralio’s videos show Nygard screaming at someone who appears to be a male employee or contractor in the Bahamas. Another shows Nygard yelling at his staff in an airport. Nygard can be heard saying: ‘You’re not following my law.’ 0:23
“He screamed at us and he screamed at me a lot. It was a very stressful environment,” Feralio said.
Feralio’s videos became a hotly contested element in a bitter legal dispute between Nygard and Bacon.
The two neighbours had been feuding for years about the expansion of Nygard’s beaches. Nygard was dredging up the seabed that sits adjacent to both of their properties, causing environmental damage.
Feralio first approached people connected to Bacon in 2014, offering hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes video in exchange for legal protection from lawsuits and living expenses.
Lawyers for Bacon filed a court action requesting access to the videos filmed by Feralio, hoping to use them as evidence in several lawsuits in the Bahamas.
Over the next five years, Nygard fought in court to keep Feralio’s video secret, arguing Feralio was his employee and Nygard owned the videos, not Feralio.
In 2019, Nygard abandoned that effort and now Feralio is sharing many of the videos with CBC.
“Nobody else in my world of Nygard has this evidence,” Feralio said.
Nygard has been in jail in Winnipeg since his arrest on Dec. 14. His lawyers argue he should be released on bail pending an extradition hearing because of his age and poor health and the risk of contracting COVID-19.
Watch full episodes of The Fifth Estate on CBC Gem, the CBC’s streaming service.
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
