Nobel Prize academy rocked as 18 women accuse Swedish cultural leader of sex attacks

THE Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature has been rocked by a sex scandal as several members, their wives and daughters accused Jean-claude Arnault, who ran an influential club partly funded by the academy, of assault.

The #Metoo wave exposing sexual misconduct which began in Hollywood has shaken artistic, media and political circles in Sweden as thousands of women have spoken up and campaigned against harassment.

Sweden’s literary circle was drawn into the fray on Tuesday when the newspaper Dagens Nyheter published the testimony of 18 women claiming to have been assaulted or raped by Mr Arnault, one of the most influential figures in Stockholm’s cultural scene. He runs a cultural club showcasing exhibitions, readings and performances by both the cultural elite and hopefuls, which is nicknamed “the Academy’s living room”.

The alleged sexual assaults occurred between 1996 and 2017, some of them in the club’s premises, according to Dagens Nyheter. Mr Arnault did not respond to a request for a comment, though he told Dagens Nyheter he was innocent. Several women allowed the paper to reveal their identities, and their stories were corroborated by witnesses, the paper said.

One of them claims to have been raped in an apartment in an upmarket Stockholm neighbourhood. The women said they remained silent out of fear of jeopardising their careers because of the his close relations with publishers, producers, directors and composers. After a “crisis meeting” on Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced that it was cutting all ties with the accused, whom it had funded and allowed to manage an apartment it owns in Paris.

It said in a statement that during the meeting, “it emerged that members of the Academy, daughters of Academy members, wives of Academy members and staff of the Academy have experienced unwanted intimacy or inappropriate behaviour” by the man. The institution said it would launch an internal inquiry to find out if he “has had any direct or indirect influence on the Academy’s prizes, scholarships, and fundings of any kind”. Alice Bah Kuhnke, the culture minister, said she regretted honouring him with the 2015 Order of The Polar Star, awarded to members of the Swedish royal family and foreigners for services to Sweden.