MANDEL: Another accuser struck from case against billionaire Frank Stronach
· Toronto Sun
And then there were three.
Of seven accusers, what remains from the battered prosecution of billionaire Frank Stronach are now just three women who allege he groped or sexually assaulted them four decades ago.
Visit milkshake.it.com for more information.
Before the Crown resumed its closing arguments regarding four complainants Wednesday, Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy passed on more bad news for prosecutors: After the previous day’s defence argument about the constantly shifting story of a horse groomer who said she was raped by the business magnate on her 21st birthday, she won’t even be considering her accusations.
“I will not be finding the evidence rises to the level of being even remotely reliable, leaving aside credibility,” the judge said. “I couldn’t possibly convict based on her evidence. It doesn’t even reach the point where similar fact evidence will assist. It is fatally flawed.”
Which accusers still remain?
The remaining three accusers are a former cocktail waitress who testified that after a date, she was groped over her clothing as she tried to leave Stronach’s harbourfront condo, a legal secretary who testified that after dinner with Stronach they went to a Balliol apartment where he bent her over a chair and tried grinding against her from behind before she left, and a businesswomen who alleged she was vaginally raped in his condo following a dinner date.
On her “similar fact” application, Crown attorney Jelena Vlacic argued there was a similarity in all three cases that lends weight to all their accounts: “All the alleged acts involve similarly age complainants with a similar age gap to Mr. Stronach, they all had a similar familiarity with him — none of them are strangers,” she said.
It began with dinner and offer of drinks, a location shift to a private residence and then an “abrupt” change in Stronach’s demeanour from friendly professional to “the amorous,” she said.
The Crown denied the women’s stories were tainted after reading each other’s accounts in the media.
Why the fourth complainant was ruled out
The evidence of the fourth remaining complainant was eviscerated in her closing submission by defence lawyer Leora Shemesh for its myriad of inconsistencies including her insistence that she’d been attacked following her 21st birthday dinner at Rooney’s — the club owned at the time by Stronach — in 1980. But she insisted it was 1981 when she learned Stronach was out of the country at the time.
That the judge found her unreliable didn’t come as a surprise. But it comes as yet another blow to the Crown’s failing case.
When his judge-alone trial began in February, Stronach, the 93-year-old founder and former CEO of Magna International, pleaded not guilty to 12 charges involving seven women.
By the end of the evidence, the Crown had already signalled they didn’t have enough to prove the charges involving three of the seven original complainants: A former nurse had a mental breakdown on the witness stand, a former Magna co-op student admitted lying about having read a Globe and Mail story by another woman suing for alleged sex assault, and the defence uncovered that an esthetician had numerous civil judgments against her — including one where the judge made a searing comment about her lack of credibility in court.
The trial continues Wednesday afternoon.