Judge rules out prison for Magna founder Frank Stronach. Sentence for 1977 indecent assault to be delivered in December

On Thursday, Canadian judge Anne Molloy ruled out a prison sentence for Frank Stronach, the 94-year-old founder of automotive supplier Magna. In June, she found him guilty of indecently assaulting a woman in 1977. She has not yet decided on the sentence and will hand it down on December 11, though she said she is "very firmly settled" that it will not be prison. "I'm not going to order custody in the circumstances of this case for a man who's 94 years old," she said at the hearing in Toronto. The Canadian Press ↗ ORF ↗

The prosecution sought six months, the defense an absolute discharge

The prosecution proposed six months in prison and having Stronach placed on the sex offender registry for ten years. Prosecutor Jelena Vlacic argued that people must be held accountable even decades later, otherwise courts would be giving people an incentive to evade responsibility. As aggravating circumstances, she cited the suddenness of the attack, its lasting consequences, and the twenty-year age gap. The Canadian Press ↗

Defense lawyer Leora Shemesh sought an absolute discharge and no registry order. According to her, this is the least serious offense of its kind, and imprisonment would do "absolutely nothing" for society. In her view, Stronach's name has already disappeared from parks and hospital wings, and that is a punishment he has already served. The city of Aurora, where Magna is headquartered, announced in June, after the conviction, that it would remove his name from a recreational facility. The Canadian Press ↗ CBC ↗

The hearing began with a statement from the complainant, who cannot be identified under a publication ban. She knew Stronach and, after having dinner with him, went to his apartment, where she said she felt "ambushed" and "overpowered". "My sense of safety in social settings was destroyed," she said. In 1977, indecent assault was a separate criminal offense carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison. In 1983, Canadian law merged it with sexual assault. The Canadian Press ↗

Of twelve charges, one conviction remains

Stronach originally faced twelve charges in Toronto from seven women over acts committed between 1977 and 1990. The prosecution withdrew one and agreed to acquittal on four. On two others, the judge deemed one woman's testimony unreliable. Of the five remaining counts, she found him guilty in June on two: indecent assault and sexual assault against another woman. CBC ↗ Der Standard ↗

A few weeks later, the judge declared a mistrial on the sexual assault conviction, a rare step after a verdict has already been delivered. The defense presented emails from the complainant's lawyer in a separate civil dispute, which it said did not match her testimony. The prosecution appealed in August and is asking the appellate court to reinstate the conviction. The defense lawyer called the appeal "a waste of precious court resources". CBC ↗

Stronach denies all the charges. The allegations from six other women are to be considered by a jury in Newmarket, Ontario, in May 2027. ORF ↗ The Canadian Press ↗

From Styria to Kechnec

Stronach was born in 1932 as Franz Strohsack in Kleinsemmering in Austria's Styria region, and emigrated to Canada in the 1950s. He built Magna from a small workshop in Toronto. He gave up control of the company in 2010, left its board in 2012, and his consulting payments from the firm ended in 2014. In 2012, he founded the Team Stronach party in Austria. Wikipedia ↗ CP24 ↗ The Globe and Mail ↗

Magna has a transmission plant in Slovakia, in Kechnec near Košice, which, according to Denník E, employed 990 people in 2021. The charges concern Stronach personally, not the company. Denník E ↗

Two weeks before the hearing, Stronach returned to Weiz in Styria for the premiere of a film about himself titled "The Magna Man." Kleine Zeitung ↗

*Illustrative photo: Frank Stronach on the night of the Austrian parliamentary elections (September 2013), Wikimedia Commons. Author: Gregor Tatschl. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.*