Frenchman in Nobel rape case found guilty

STOCKHOLM: A Frenchman at the centre of a scandal that led to the postponement of this year’s Nobel Literature Prize was on Monday found guilty on appeal of two counts of rape and jailed for two-and-a-half years. Once an influential figure in Stockholm’s cultural scene, 72-year-old Jean-Claude Arnault was convicted by a Stockholm appeals court of raping a young woman in October 2011 and again in December the same year. He had pleaded innocent to the charges, insisting the sex was consensual. A Stockholm district court had in October found him guilty of the first count of rape but acquitted him of the second, and had sentenced him to two years behind bars. “The appeals court has come to a different conclusion and considers it proven beyond a doubt that the accused is guilty of rape on the second occasion as well,” the appeals court said in a statement. The case was one of the first big trials to come out of the #MeToo movement, and has left the venerable Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, in tatters.