TORONTO — At dinner, Frank Stronach had felt like a “fatherly mentor” but things changed once they were alone in his downtown Toronto condo, a woman told his sexual assault trial as she described an evening in the early 1980s.
The woman had previously worked at Stronach’s restaurant and nightclub and agreed to meet him for dinner after asking him for details on her termination from the popular hot spot, she said.
After dinner, she said, her former employer asked her to come see his nearby condo and she reluctantly agreed despite feeling “uncomfortable.”
She felt the hair raise on the back of her neck and her heart start pounding almost immediately after stepping inside what she believed to be a penthouse apartment, she said.
“I felt afraid to be in that apartment with him alone,” she said, adding that the “fatherly vibe” was gone.
When she insisted that she had to go, Stronach helped her slip on her coat, but he held on to her lapels or shoulders as she turned back around to face him, she said. The woman backed up against the wall by the door and then Stronach was up against her, groping her as he tried to convince her to stay, she said.
“He was going up and down, up and down my body,” touching her breasts and hips, she said, mimicking the motion with both hands. “I was terrified.”
The woman said she did her best to get out of the situation, expressing her gratitude for Stronach’s professional help while making it clear that physical intimacy “wasn’t going to happen.”
“He was older than my father, I had no interest whatsoever,” she said.
After what “felt like forever” but was likely a minute or two, Stronach backed off and the woman bolted, confused by the way things had unfolded, she said. Stronach’s driver gave her a ride home, she said.
Stronach, who is 93, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges related to seven complainants over alleged incidents that date as far back as the 1970s.
The woman, now 63, is the second complainant to take the stand. All seven complainants — none of whom can be identified under a standard publication ban — are expected to testify at the judge-alone trial, which began last week after some delay.
The woman’s testimony Tuesday was emotional at times, and she wiped away tears as she voiced her discomfort at having to discuss such intimate things in public.
Days or weeks after the incident, the woman said she received a call from someone at Magna International, the company Stronach founded in a rented garage in the 1950s. They were offering to have her come in for a job interview, she said.
She accepted and ended up working at Magna for several years, she said. She saw Stronach regularly but they didn’t work together, she said, adding he was “pleasant, polite, professional.”
The woman first contacted police in August 2024 after seeing a segment on the evening news about Stronach being charged, she said. In the report, the renowned entrepreneur denied the allegations and called his accusers liars, she said.
“I didn’t sleep that night,” she said.
She may have seen other coverage of the allegations at some point, she said, but purposely tried to keep herself “out of the fray,” particularly after giving a formal statement to Peel Regional Police in September 2024.
Stronach’s lawyer pressed the woman on her statements to police, including one in which she said she didn’t feel she had been sexually assaulted that night.
The woman responded that she had been referring specifically to sex when she made that comment.
Defence lawyer Leora Shemesh also suggested the woman’s testimony included details she had not mentioned to police, including that Stronach had helped her with her coat or held her lapels, or that he had tried to give her a “European kiss” on the cheek at the door.
Police didn’t ask her to go into “extreme detail,” so she gave them a “general idea,” the woman replied.
“I’m going into more details today than I have the whole time,” she said.
The defence questioned the woman’s account of why she contacted Stronach, how the dinner came about and how she was offered an interview at Magna, suggesting she had reached out to the businessman in the hopes of securing a new job and wanted to meet with him to make her pitch.
The woman rejected that suggestion, noting the job was entry level and stressing her intention was to get an answer regarding her termination.
Shemesh suggested it was “peculiar” the woman was “remotely interested” in the job, considering she’d described being frightened of Stronach at his condo.
“What I learned that night is that I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be alone with this man again … I wasn’t going to put myself in a position for that to happen again,” the woman replied.
Last week, court heard from the first complainant, a woman in her 60s who testified Stronach came over with champagne when she was at his restaurant with friends in the early 1980s, then groped her on the dance floor.
She testified that she woke up in an unknown place later that night and realized he was raping her.
The defence suggested the first woman’s narrative of what happened has evolved with time, highlighting discrepancies in what she told police, media and the court over the years.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2026.
Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press
