A former employee breaks her silence about Frank Stronach four decades after an alleged assault
CTV
Staring out from a sepia-tinged photo is a smiling young woman with her blond hair swept up into a ponytail as she puts hay in a net in a horse stall.
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Staring out from a sepia-tinged photo is a smiling young woman with her blond hair swept up into a ponytail as she puts hay in a net in a horse stall.
"Lee," whose real name has been concealed due to a court order preventing her name from being published, rode her horse before she started walking. At 20 years old, she was working a dream job as a groom, caring for the animals she loved.
The photograph was taken in the summer of 1980 -- the year when everything changed for Lee. A second photo in her hands shows a red mare with a mane the colour of golden wheat. "Lindy" was a thoroughbred she took care of while working at Toronto's Woodbine racetrack.
The horse belonged to Frank Stronach, the founder of auto parts maker Magna International.
When Stronach decided to move Lindy from Woodbine to his Beechwood farm, Lee, who had grown attached to the horse, approached the businessman for a transfer. In less than a month, she was watering and feeding Lindy at Stronach’s home farm north of Toronto.
At that time, Stronach was 47 years old and married with two children.
