Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of one of the members of the Swedish Academy, was on Monday convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for a rape in 2011, reported Time. The Swedish Academy picks the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 2017, 18 women had accused Arnault, a 72-year-old French photographer, of harassment and physical abuse. He had denied the allegations. In May, the Swedish Academy announced that it had decided not to award the Nobel Prize in Literature this year following a controversy over allegations of sexual misconduct and the leaks of the names of some winners.

The Stockholm District Court said that the ruling was unanimous. “The court’s conclusion is that the evidence is enough to find the defendant guilty of one of the events,” Judge Gudrun Antemar said. The evidence “has mainly consisted of statements made during the trial by the injured party and several witnesses”, said Antemar.

The court’s verdict came shortly before the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was declared on Monday. Cancer researchers James P Allison and Tasuku Honjo jointly won the award for their “discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation”.

In April, the head of the Academy, Sara Danius, stepped down following criticism over how an investigation into a sexual misconduct was handled.