Frank Stronach leaves the University Ave. courthouse in Toronto on Feb. 13.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
As the trial of Frank Stronach was set to begin in February, the auto-parts businessman faced a dozen charges related to sexual assaults of seven women stretching back decades.
The court heard accounts over several weeks of women who said Mr. Stronach had harmed them. The alleged encounters often began at a Toronto bar he owned and ended nearby at his condo. One woman testified she was pinned down by Mr. Stronach on a cot – “no way out.” She felt paralyzed and “let him do what he wanted to do.”
But as the trial concluded last week – a judgment may land in mid-June – the case against Mr. Stronach looks a lot different than it did at the outset.
The 93-year-old Mr. Stronach, a former leading member of Canada’s business elite and founder of Magna International, now faces possible conviction on five charges involving three complainants – less than half the case of two months ago. He has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to all charges. He was in court through the trial but did not testify.
Seven other charges are effectively shelved. Five of them were withdrawn by the Crown during the trial as complainants struggled in their testimony. Two were met with skepticism from the judge during closing arguments.
The erosion of the Crown’s case against Mr. Stronach – at times as prosecutors were trying to prove the allegations in court – casts a stark spotlight on the challenges of seeking justice for historical sexual assaults.
Witness testifies that Frank Stronach was all over her ‘like an octopus’
Securing convictions on charges of sexual assault is already difficult. The percentage is significantly lower than for crimes such as homicides or robberies. The wobbly case against Mr. Stronach raises questions about what’s needed to pull off a major prosecution of historical sexual assaults with potentially low odds of a conviction.
Some legal experts argue for the value of testing such serious allegations in court.
“It’s very difficult to say whether it was a mistake to bring the case,” said Lisa Dufraimont, a law professor and associate dean at Osgoode Hall at York University.
She said police and prosecutors in the past had been too cautious to bring such cases to court and too often deemed allegations as unfounded.
“We don’t want to err on the side of rejecting cases that might have merit by holding up too high a standard for going ahead,” Prof. Dufraimont said. “That’s historically been a problem.”
But Daniel Brown, one of the defence lawyers in last year’s Hockey Canada trial, questioned the quality of cases being brought to court by prosecutors in Ontario.
He pointed to Ontario’s prosecution directive, which says the Crown proceeds with charges to trial when there is a “reasonable prospect of conviction” alongside a public interest in a prosecution.
“That’s a big gap from proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Mr. Brown said of what’s required to convict a person after a trial.
Defence lawyer Daniel Brown, centre, represented former NHL player Alex Formenton in the 2025 Hockey Canada sexual assault trial.Nicole Osborne/The Globe and Mail
The case against Mr. Stronach began when Peel Regional Police arrested him in June, 2024. There were five initial charges, including the historical offence of rape.
While it had been more than a decade since he relinquished control of Magna International, Mr. Stronach’s decades-long prominence in the business world made the arrest headline news. His story had often been told: He immigrated to Canada from Austria with meagre savings in 1954, in his early 20s, and soon after became an entrepreneur. His eventual wealth was estimated at several billion dollars and he was also a prominent player in horse racing.
Through the course of the trial, the usual challenges in historical sexual assault cases have been, for several complainants, acute: inexact memories casting doubt on what the women have alleged.
The challenges were encapsulated during closing arguments in early April.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy spoke about the first complainant, known as LS because of a publication ban on the women’s identities. She had testified in mid-February. The judge described LS’s evidence as so unreliable that it was “fatally flawed” and could not serve as the basis for a conviction.
Mr. Stronach had been charged with rape and indecent assault of LS in the early 1980s.
When LS testified, she described Mr. Stronach during a night out, ahead of the alleged assault, as being “like an octopus, he seemed to be all over me.” But Mr. Stronach’s lawyer, Leora Shemesh, pressed LS on whether the assault took place in 1980 or 1981. There wasn’t a clear answer. Ms. Shemesh, in her closing argument, described LS as a “really, really bad storyteller.”
Leora Shemesh walks into court with Frank Stronach on Feb. 3.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Another complainant, a 73-year-old woman known as BT, had a tough time in court in late February. BT at times was racked with tears, couldn’t answer coherently and spoke over defence questions from Ms. Shemesh. Justice Molloy called it a spectacle, ended the day in court early and expressed concerns about the complainant’s mental health.
Mr. Stronach had been charged with sexual assault of BT and unlawful confinement from events alleged to have happened in 1986. The Crown gave up on both of those.
According to Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney-General, the Crown is currently seeking conviction on seven charges connected with four complainants. But two of those are charges from LS’s allegations that Justice Molloy called fatally flawed.
That leaves five charges and three complainants where there is a prospect of conviction. These include a charge of indecent assault in 1977; three charges, including a historical charge of rape, from the early 1980s; and a charge of sexual assault from the early 1980s, the woman on the cot at Mr. Stronach’s condo who testified she saw no way out.
Last Thursday, on the trial’s final day, Justice Molloy said she would reconvene June 19 but wasn’t certain the ruling would be ready. “It’s a very difficult decision to write,” she said.
Beyond the trial in Toronto, Mr. Stronach faces a second trial later this year in Newmarket, north of Toronto, to weigh allegations that took place near and in Aurora, where Magna is headquartered. There are six charges of sexual assault against six women, ranging from 1988 to 2024.
Michael Plaxton, a law professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said issues with complainants’ testimony at the Toronto trial probably should have been apparent before it began. But he emphasized the importance of a trial, even with its high costs in dollars and court time, and its human toll on the people involved.
“I cannot shake the feeling that there is something valuable served by going through the process, no matter the outcome,” Prof. Plaxton said. “That we have trials precisely to sort out what happened.”
Stronach faces a second trial later this year in Newmarket, Ont., north of Toronto.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Alison Craig, a Toronto criminal defence lawyer, said the fallibility of memory is a hurdle in historical sexual assaults. Uncertainty hurts a complainant’s credibility, meaning whether they are telling the truth, and reliability, meaning whether their testimony is accurate.
“Most of us don’t remember last week, never mind 30, 40 years ago,” Ms. Craig said. “The reality is it’ll always be an uphill battle.”
She said it appeared the prosecution’s problems were likely worse than the Crown anticipated. But she added that the decision to withdraw charges was smart. “Most Crowns would just forge ahead and hope for the best.”
Mr. Brown, the defence lawyer from the Hockey Canada trial, said the high-profile nature of the rocky case against Mr. Stronach could discourage other people who have been sexually assaulted from coming forward to police. He likened it to the Hockey Canada case. In that trial last year, five former junior hockey players had been accused of sexual assault. It also took place under an intense spotlight and the complainant’s lack of credibility and reliability resulted in acquittals on all charges.
He suggested the Crown needs to think about “the impact of an unsuccessful prosecution.” Ontario’s standard to bring a case to trial – a “reasonable prospect of conviction” and a public interest in a prosecution – is the same as the federal Public Prosecution Service of Canada’s. In British Columbia, the threshold is a “substantial likelihood of conviction.”
Mr. Brown said that while there is a public interest in prosecuting old sexual assault cases, there is likewise a public interest in not doing so in some situations. He said more scrutiny in the early stages of a case, uncovering potential problems with complainants before a trial, would be better than “watching them get destroyed in court because their evidence is inconsistent or not believable.”
“This is,” Mr. Brown said, “what the Crown has to consider before they invest in these prosecutions.”