Defence suggests woman regrets engaging in sexual encounter with Frank Stronach

TORONTO — One of the complainants in billionaire businessman Frank Stronach’s sexual assault trial is pretending not to remember portions of their encounter to cover up her regret about what happened that night decades ago, his defence lawyer suggested Friday.

Leora Shemesh suggested in cross-examination that the woman, who is the fourth complainant to testify in the case, does in fact remember how things played out inside Stronach’s harbourfront condo.

“This whole narrative of ‘I don’t remember how I got from here to there and I don’t remember how clothes came off’ – that’s a lie,” she suggested.

“No, that’s not true,” the woman, who is in her early 60s, responded.

“And I’m going to suggest to you that you absolutely do know exactly how things happened but you are embarrassed to admit that you have regret. That’s really your narrative,” the defence lawyer went on.

“That’s not true and not the case,” the complainant repeated.

Stronach, who is 93, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges stemming from alleged incidents involving seven complainants and dating back as far as the 1970s.

The woman previously testified that she briefly worked for Stronach’s company in 1983 and agreed to go to dinner with him at the end of the summer. He then invited her to see the view from his condo, and she reluctantly agreed because she couldn’t think of a legitimate reason to refuse, she said.

Once they arrived, Stronach disappeared for a few minutes, then came up behind her at the window and started fondling her breasts, she said. She then ended up face down on a bed in the bedroom with him penetrating her, she said, describing it as “degrading.”

The woman said she had no memory of how she got to the bedroom or on the bed, which she attributed to the pain of knowing she had gone along “like a lamb to the slaughter.”

Afterward, he drove her home, acting as though everything was normal, she told the court.

On Friday, the woman agreed that she never told Stronach she wasn’t interested or fought against him. She was “psychologically paralyzed” and unable to process what was happening, she said.

The defence plans to argue the woman consented to and participated in sexual activity with Stronach, Shemesh told the court during legal arguments held in the absence of the complainant.

“She is so confused because she hates that she engaged in this act, and she regrets it, and she hates it, hates herself for it,” she said.

The complainant never said she was sexually assaulted — nor did the Crown ask her that in its questioning, Shemesh argued, calling it an “inadvertent slip” by prosecutors.

Crown attorney Jelena Vlacic argued the woman was “quite clear,” and used words such as “horrified” and “petrified” in describing the incident.

“This is overwhelming evidence of her subjective state of mind, her non-consent,” the prosecutor said.

Several legal issues have arisen during the complainant’s testimony, centring largely on her interactions with Vlacic.

On Friday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy urged Vlacic to “reflect on” why she didn’t do anything when the woman lied on the stand during examination-in-chief a day earlier.

Earlier in the day, the complainant apologized to the court for testifying that she had not read an op-ep written by a woman suing Stronach over alleged sexual misconduct when she had in fact read the piece and discussed it “quite at length” with the Crown.

“You knew she was not telling the truth and you did nothing. You need to reflect on that,” Molloy told Vlacic before the lunch break.

“It’s not what I expect of the Crown when a witness is obviously lying and you take no steps to correct the record.”

When the hearing resumed, Vlacic told the judge she’d “agonized” over what happened and would not have wanted to leave the court with the impression that the woman had never read the article.

“That was the impression that was left at the end of your examination,” the judge said. The Crown should have alerted the defence, she said.

“You’re an officer of the court … you have to be above the fray,” the judge said. Molloy said she was “shocked” when she heard the complainant’s apology.

The case faced another hurdle on Thursday, with the court taking two unplanned pauses to deal with legal issues that emerged after the complainant repeatedly referred to her preparatory meetings with the prosecution while laying out her account of her encounter with Stronach.

She said the Crown had pointed to an element of her police statement that could be seen as an “omission,” and in another instance, told her she had given “inconsistent statements” on her demeanour during the incident.

Shemesh, the defence lawyer, has previously indicated she will seek a stay of proceedings over allegations that some of the complainants were coached by the Crown ahead of the trial.

On Thursday, she pressed the woman on what was said during a January meeting, and the woman maintained that the Crown never advised her on how to give her evidence.

None of the complainants can be identified under a standard publication ban. All are expected to testify in the trial, which began last week after some delay.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 20, 2026.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press