Arnault, Central Figure in Nobel Scandal, Is Jailed for Rape

STOCKHOLM — A Swedish court on Monday found Jean-Claude Arnault, the man at the center of a scandal that led to the cancellation of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature, guilty of raping a woman in 2011.

The court sentenced Arnault to two years in prison, the minimum term for rape.

Arnault’s lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, told Swedish news media that his client would appeal the verdict. He had previously denied the allegations against Arnault, describing them as a “witch hunt.”

The charges against Arnault, 72, stemmed from a scandal that severely damaged the reputation of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in literature, and set off a series of recriminations and power struggles there.

Arnault, a French photographer, was long seen in Sweden as someone who could make or break a career in the arts. He and his wife, a member of the Swedish Academy, owned the Forum, a popular cultural venue that received support from the academy.

The Swedish Academy declined to comment on the verdict.

In November last year, the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter reported that 18 women had accused Arnault of sexual assault or harassment. Many said they had been mistreated at the Forum or at academy-owned properties in Stockholm and Paris. The accusations covered a period of 20 years. In many cases, too much time had passed for criminal charges to be considered under Swedish law.

But in June, prosecutors charged Arnault with two counts of rape, both involving the same woman, in relation to separate episodes in 2011. The woman, a writer and academic, went to the police a few days after the Dagens Nyheter report was published, telling them she had not come forward earlier because Arnault was a close friend of her boss.

At a three-day trial in Stockholm District Court that ended on Sept. 24, prosecutors said that Arnault had forced the woman to perform oral sex and to have intercourse in October 2011, and raped her as she slept in December 2011.

The four-person panel who heard the case — Judge Gudrun Antemar and three lay judges — found him guilty only of the forced oral sex.

Antemar said in a statement released by the court that the evidence showed beyond a reasonable doubt that Arnault had gripped the woman by the neck to prevent her from moving away.

The court acquitted him of the other charges. The verdicts were unanimous.

“The evidence in this case has mainly consisted of statements made during the trial by the injured party and several witnesses,” Antemar said in a statement released by the court. “The court has made a thorough evaluation of the evidence and the court’s conclusion is that the evidence is enough to find the defendant guilty of one of the events for which the prosecutor has brought charges.”

Though Arnault could have received a sentence of up to six years, two years “is a reasonable penalty,” Christina Voigt, the prosecutor, said in a telephone interview. In addition to the prison term, the court awarded unspecified damages to the victim.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, a lawyer for the victim, called the verdict “a big relief for my client” and “a victory for justice.” She said it should undermine “the culture of silence that surrounds rapes and sex crimes.”

The verdict was announced as the 2018 Nobel season opened, the first without a literature prize in nearly 70 years. The first prize, for physiology or medicine, was announced minutes after the court announced its decision on Arnault.

Torn apart by an acrimonious fight over its affiliation with Arnault, the Swedish Academy, which has handed out the award since 1901, announced in May that it would instead name two winners in 2019.

Following the revelations, the academy cut its ties with the Forum, Arnault’s cultural club, but it refused to expel Arnault’s wife, Katarina Frostenson, a well-known poet. Instead, members who wanted to play down the crisis ousted Sara Danius, the first woman to lead the academy. Several members resigned in disgust.

Lars Heikensten, director of the Nobel Foundation, has said there might not be a literature prize next year, either.

Heikensten told the public service broadcaster Sveriges Radio in May that the prize would “be awarded when the Swedish Academy has won back the public’s trust.”