Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach used his wealth and power to sexually abuse women, some of whom worked for him, as far back as the 1970s and as recently as this year, alleges a new documentary for CBC’s The Fifth Estate series, featuring interviews with victims and the automotive and horse-racing mogul himself.
The Austrian-born businessman and politician was arrested in June, and now faces 18 charges of sexual assault for crimes spanning six decades, but details about the alleged abuse had been scarce. Stronach has denied the allegations.
The new documentary centers on Stronach’s alleged manipulation and abuse of young female employees working at businesses he owns in Aurora, Ontario.
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At a restaurant owned by the billionaire, called Frank’s Organic Garden, Stronach allegedly made unwanted advances to staff in recent years—in one instance asking for oral sex while the two were in a locked car.
“Everybody’s afraid of Frank,” an employee there told The Fifth Estate. “He can pay off anyone he wants. So, it’s like, having worked for him, you learn the things he gets away with and everybody’s afraid of it.”
A woman identified by the pseudonym “Leigh,” who worked at a horse stable owned by Stronach, told The Fifth Estate that he had raped her in 1980, when she was 20, after making advances toward her at a bar he owned, called Rooney’s.
Leigh said the bar wasn’t her sort of place, but that she had been convinced by fellow Stronach employees to make an appearance there since it was her birthday.
After he approached her on the dance floor, Stronach gave Leigh champagne even after she said she didn’t drink. That’s when the sexual assault began, she said.
“I’m out on the dance floor and he’s holding me really, really tight,” she said. “I was trying to get loose. And then he shoves up in my skirt and he punctures my pantyhose, and he sticks his fingers right inside of me.”
Leigh has no recollection of how she ended up in Stronach’s condo, but she said she awoke to him assaulting her.
“I remember waking up, lying in bed. I was on my back, looking up at the ceiling, and I could see myself in the ceiling,” Leigh said. “I could see him on top of me. He was having sex with me. Raping me.”
The trauma from the incident made Leigh suicidal for a time, she said. She quit her job at the stables and lost her joy for working with horses.
Another woman, not an employee of Stronach, said she was also sexually assaulted in the mogul’s condo after an encounter that began at Rooney’s.
Jane Boon said although Stronach didn’t rape her he abused his power to have sex with her when she was a 19-year-old intern at Magna, the auto parts manufacturer Stronach founded.
He invited her to a disco in 1986, she said, and after a night of dancing and drinking, instructed her to give her keys to his driver, who would look after them.
“It dawned on me that I’d been caught in a trap,” she said.
Stronach and Boon had sex, which she said wasn’t rape, but still wasn’t right.
“It was a horrible abuse of power,” she said. “To put it bluntly, a 54-year-old CEO should not be hitting on 19-year-old co-op students in their employ.”
In his interview with The Fifth Estate, Stronach denied the allegations against him, as he has before. He said he thinks he will be found innocent.
“Those are very serious charges and I realize that. But on the other hand, I am who I am,” he said. “Because when you go to heaven, if you meet God, he knows. He knows: Did you do the right thing or the wrong thing.”
