‘ LENSMAN ARNAULT GROPED CROWN PRINCESS AT SWEDISH ACADEMY EVENT’
Sweden’s
Crown Princess Victoria was allegedly sexually harassed by Jean- Claude Arnault, the French photographer at the centre of the crisis rolling the Swedish Academy.
According to the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, three sources, at least one within the Academy, claim to have witnessed Arnault groping the Crown Princess’s bottom at an event put on by the body, which awards the Nobel Prize for Literature.
“Her female aide threw herself forward and pushed him away,” Swedish feminist Ebba Witt- Brattstrom said.
“She pushed away hand.”
After the alleged transgression, the Academy’s his then permanent secretary Horace Engdahl was reportedly instructed by the court to “undertake measures” to ensure that the Crown Princess, then still in her 20s, would never be left alone in the company of the then 60year- old Arnault.
Meanwhile, Arnault denies groping Crown Princess at the event in 2006. The story, if true, is another blow to the claims of longstanding Academy members, Engdahl in particular, that they were unaware of Arnault reputation as a serial sexual harasser.
“We can’t comment on that particular information,” Margareta Thorgren, press officer at the Swedish Royal Court told the newspaper, although she said the court supported the # metoo movement against sexual harassment.
Arnault is married to Katarina Frostenson, a poet and Academy member, and is reportedly a close friend of Engdahl’s.
“The claimed transgressions never took place,” Arnault said, according to his lawyer. “This is idiotic”.