CBC News

Long before the Me-Too era, women were whispering about the rich and powerful Canadian magnate Peter Nygard. From his homes in Winnipeg, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and a beachfront estate in the Bahamas, Nygard used power and privilege to shield his sexual predatory behaviour for decades before finally falling from grace — in no small part because of the dogged reporting of a small Fifth Estate investigative team. CBC stood alone for years in revealing the man’s sex trafficking and abuse of minors, and also ultimately revealed the systems that shielded him and others like him. It was a costly and litigious battle. The Fifth Estate team was targeted with lawsuits, surveillance, and most extraordinarily, an unprecedented criminal libel case that could have put them in prison for five years. Their investigation, and that of CBC Podcasts: Evil by Design, shifted the way the media reports about sexual trauma, and has empowered dozens of other survivors to pursue justice. More than 120 women have now joined a class-action lawsuit. Nygard has been in jail in Canada since 2020, and faces extradition to the U.S. on charges related to sex trafficking.