MANDEL: Frank Stronach made her feel like 'trapped animal,' ex-waitress testifies
· Toronto Sun
She was flustered, emotional, defensive and wishing she was anywhere but in that downtown courtroom as she took the stand against Frank Stronach .
By the time his lawyer was finished with her fierce cross-examination, the second woman to accuse the business magnate of sexual assault in his lakeside condo more than 40 years ago had admitted she wondered if she’d given him the wrong message before she said he allegedly groped her and asked her to stay.
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Now in her early 60s, she was in her early 20s at the time and making good money as a cocktail waitress at Rooney’s, a popular dinner club owned by Stronach, when she was abruptly fired. She left a message for the Magna owner at head office to find out why.
To her surprise, she testified, Stronach told her he’d look into it and later invited her to dinner near her new restaurant job on the waterfront to tell her what he’d learned.
Complainant says she had dinner with Stronach
After work, she said she walked over to dinner at the Admiral Inn, where Stronach was a perfect gentleman: “I felt like he was a fatherly mentor who was trying to get an answer for me,” she recalled.
She said he told her Rooney’s manager accused her of selling drugs at the club, something she vehemently denied. But she finally had her answer and could put it behind her.
After dinner, she said Stronach offered to have his driver take her home, but would she first like to stop at his nearby condo on the lake? He’d been pleasant, polite and respectful and she appreciated the effort he’d made to find out why she was fired.
It was “awkward,” but she went along, a decision she said she regrets. “I shouldn’t have been up there, really. I shouldn’t have gone.”
They took an elevator to what she thought was the penthouse or near the top of the building. She entered to find a wall of glass facing a beautiful vista of the lake. She said she declined Stronach’s offer of a drink and he poured one for himself.
‘Fatherly vibe’ was gone at condo
Asked by assistant Crown attorney Julia Bellehumeur to describe what happened inside the condo, the complainant paused for the first time to fight back tears. Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy, who is presiding over the judge-alone trial, asked if she’d like to take a break but she chose to press on. “I want to get this over with.”
She said that Stronach’s “fatherly vibe” was gone; she said she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up and hear her heart pounding in her ears.
“I felt afraid to be in that apartment alone with him,” she testified.
“I felt like a trapped animal and I had to get out of there. I was terrified.”
Stronach wanted her to stay, she said, but she made excuses and moved to the door, asking for her coat. As he helped her put it on, she said she backed against the wall and felt he was too close. His body began pressing against hers, she said, as his hands began to grope her.
“They were touching my breasts and they were touching my hips and just up and down my body,” she recalled.
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‘Had no interest whatsoever:’ Ex-waitress
She said that when she insisted again that she had to go, Stronach backed off and she fled.
Bellehumeur asked if she ever suggested an interest in an intimate relationship.
“I’m absolutely convinced that I made it clear to him that that wasn’t my intention and that wasn’t going to happen,” she told the court. “He’s older than my father. I had no interest whatsoever.”
Stronach, 93, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges, including rape, sexual assault and forcible confinement, related to seven complainants. The founder of auto-parts giant Magna International faces a separate trial in Newmarket on similar charges later this year.
Despite the encounter, she later accepted a job at Magna and worked there for six years. Stronach, she explained, was always polite and professional.
After seeing a news report about his arrest and his insistence that the women were lying, the complainant came forward to her local police in August 2024.
Questioned about police statements
Under intense questioning by defence lawyer Leora Shemesh, who accused her of offering many new details for the first time, she agreed she told police as recently as last month that she never felt confined by Stronach and wondered at the time if she had given him “mixed messages.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I did,” she said in her recent police statement. “I had no intention of sharing an intimate evening with him and maybe he thought that was the expectation.”
Shemesh also read her a portion of her first police statement in September 2024, when she seemed to downplay the incident.
“I was very uncomfortable for a period of time there,” she told police. “I didn’t get, you know, sexually assaulted.”
She quickly clarified what she meant. “Well, I was referring to having any intimate sex with him. That’s what I was referring to.”
And then she was finally done.
A third complainant is expected to testify Wednesday.