Frank Stronach found guilty on two charges related to two women in sex assault trial

“Mr. Stronach has been found guilty on the least serious offences for two complainants who were not exposed in any way, he was not exposed … no one had their clothes off,” Leora Shemesh said after escorting her client, who has been out on bail throughout the trial, out of the courthouse.

Despite the two findings of guilt, Shemesh said Stronach “really is a national treasure and should be treated as such, in my respectful opinion.”

The founder of the auto parts giant Magna International had pleaded not guilty to 12 charges stemming from alleged incidents involving seven complainants. The allegations spanned from the late 1970s to the 1990s.

The trial started in February, and by the time arguments wrapped up in April, prosecutors had withdrawn one charge and agreed Stronach should be found not guilty on four more.

The judge then said she couldn’t convict the businessman based on the evidence of one of the remaining complainants, whose account she found unreliable.

That left Stronach with five charges related to three complainants.

One of the three women was a former employee at Rooney’s, the popular restaurant and nightlife complex Stronach owned at the time, while the other two said they first encountered him at the venue.

Molloy found Stronach guilty Friday on two charges related to two complainants: sexual assault toward the former employee and indecent assault toward a woman who frequented Rooney’s in the 1970s.

The former employee testified that she agreed to meet Stronach for dinner one evening in the early 1980s after reaching out to him for information on her termination from Rooney’s. 

Over dinner at a restaurant, Stronach felt like a “fatherly mentor,” but the woman said she felt uncomfortable when he asked her to come see his nearby condo afterward.

She felt her heart pounding almost immediately after going into the unit, she testified. When she insisted on leaving, Stronach helped her put on her coat, groping her in the process, she said. The woman said he ran his hands up and down her body, touching her breasts and hips.

The woman left, and days or weeks later she received a call offering her a job interview at Magna International, the company Stronach founded in the 1950s, she said. She ended up working at the company for several years but didn’t work directly with Stronach, she said.

The woman was a “compelling, believable and truthful witness,” Molloy said in an 83-page written ruling. The judge said she was “completely convinced” that Stronach had groped the woman “briefly but without her consent, in some kind of attempt to persuade her not to leave.”

“While this might be just the way many men acted back in the ’80s, that does not excuse the conduct, nor does it make it consensual,” the judge wrote.

Though the defence argued the complainant’s account had changed over time, Molloy disagreed, saying she accepted the woman’s explanation that she was simply providing details at trial that she had never been asked for in the past.

The offence of sexual assault encompasses a wide range of behaviours, and the conduct in this case is “decidedly at the low end of that spectrum,” the judge noted in her analysis.

Still, “the conduct, although minor, was nevertheless touching of a sexual nature without consent,” which makes it sexual assault, she wrote. The nature of the touching involved should be addressed at sentencing rather than used to determine whether a sexual assault took place, she continued.

The woman Stronach was found to have indecently assaulted testified that she was a regular at Rooney’s and had seen him there frequently. One night in 1977, they had a lobster dinner at the restaurant then Stronach invited her to see his apartment, she said.

Once inside the apartment, Stronach disappeared for a few minutes, then the woman felt a push that put her over the arm of an armchair, she said. Stronach lifted up her skirt and she could feel his erect penis against her underwear like he was trying to penetrate them, though she did not know if he had taken his clothes off, she said.

The woman said she eventually freed herself by standing up, then took her coat and purse and left. She didn’t recall anyone speaking.

In her written ruling, Molloy said she found the woman’s evidence to be “fair and considerate,” without embellishment or exaggeration.

The judge said she recognized that the act the woman described was “bizarre,” but that doesn’t suggest that she invented it, as the defence argued.

And while the woman did not give a “plausible” explanation for her decision to follow Stronach to his apartment, the reason ultimately doesn’t matter, the judge said.

“It does not matter whether she flirted, nor does it matter why she went to Mr. Stronach’s apartment. What matters is whether the conduct she attributed to Mr. Stronach happened. Did he come up behind her and without warning, push her over a chair, raise her skirt and grind his crotch into her vaginal area over her panties?”

“Based on the evidence before me, I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that this is indeed what he did,” she wrote, adding it was clear from the evidence that the woman did not consent.

Since the incident took place in 1977, Stronach is guilty of the charge of indecent assault, which existed at the time but was folded into the charge of sexual assault when it was created in 1983.

Molloy found Stronach not guilty of the charges related to the final remaining complainant, who alleged Stronach raped her in his condo after a dinner date in the early 1980s.

“There were too many uncertainties about the incident alleged by (the woman) for me to be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt as to Mr. Stronach’s guilt of the violent rape she described,” Molloy told the hearing.

In writing, the judge said she did not believe the woman “simply invented this story” as the defence suggested, but she could not be sure about what happened after things took a sexual turn in Stronach’s apartment or whether the complainant “consented to all of it or merely some of it.”

Molloy highlighted some of the challenges in trials involving historical allegations, saying the “frailty of human memory” makes it more difficult to “piece together what actually happened” when a lot of time has passed.

“The bottom line, however, is that this is a criminal trial and the burden remains on the Crown to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt in the same way as any other criminal trial,” the judge said.

“The fact that memories are faulty and particulars are missing, while understandable, does not change the standard of proof.”

A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for September.

Stronach also faces a separate trial on similar charges in Newmarket, Ont., which is now set to take place next May.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2026.

-with files from Monique Kasonga

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Frank Stronach found guilty on two charges related to two women in sex assault trial

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