Man at center of Nobel scandal convicted of rape

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — The man at the center of a sex abuse and financial crimes scandal in Sweden that is tarnishing the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature was convicted of rape and sentenced Monday to two years in prison.

Jean-Claude Arnault, 72, a major cultural figure in Sweden, had faced two counts of rape for the same woman in 2011. He was found guilty of one rape but was acquitted of the other because the victim said she was asleep at the time and judges said her account wasn’t reliable.

Arnault had denied the charges.

Stockholm District Court said the ruling by the judge and three jurors was unanimous.

The victim’s lawyer, Elisabeth Massi Fritz, said Monday’s verdict was important both for her client and for the #MeToo movement.

“(It was) a big relief for my client, who today believes in justice,” she said. “No rape victims should be silent, no rape victims should feel guilt or shame.”

Judge Gudrun Antemar said the role of the court was to decide whether the prosecutor had proven the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

“The court’s conclusion is that the evidence is enough to find the defendant guilty of one of the events,” she said, adding that the evidence “has mainly consisted of statements made during the trial by the injured party and several witnesses.”

In Sweden, rape is punishable by a minimum of two years and a maximum of six years in prison.

“We are obviously disappointed,” Arnault’s lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig told TT. “I spoke to him a few minutes ago and his order was to start working on an appeal.”

Prosecutor Christina Voigt had demanded three years in prison for Arnault, a French photographer who ran a cultural center in Stockholm that had financial ties to the Swedish Academy and who was a key figure among Sweden’s cultural elite.

Despite Arnault’s prominence in Sweden, Voigt told Sweden’s news agency TT that “this case is no different from any other rape trial.”