Spectator journalist, 87, is found guilty of attacking woman on ski weekend at his Swiss chalet in 2009

The journalist Taki Theodoracopulos has been handed a 12-month suspended prison sentence by a judge in Switzerland for an attempted rape in 2009.

The 87-year-old, who writes a column for the Spectator, was found guilty of attacking a woman on a ski weekend at his chalet in Gstaad in the Swiss Alps.

During a nine-hour hearing at the Oberland regional court in Thun on Thursday, Theodoracopulos dismissed the woman’s accusations as “monstrous” and a plot to destroy his career. He said he was “absolutely not guilty”.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, broke down in tears as she told the court about the violent assault. She said: “I felt like a piece of meat. I didn’t feel that he saw me as a person at all. I tried very hard to put the incident behind me but it really shook my confidence professionally and it has had ongoing emotional consequences.”

The woman said another journalist had invited her to Theodoracopulos’s chalet, called Palataki or Little Palace, in early 2009.

She explained why she had waited a decade to report the attack, having first made a complaint to the Metropolitan police in 2019. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me. The accused was, is, a wealthy and powerful man. I thought everyone would think I was lying and I was trying to make my way in [my career].

“But, also, I felt ashamed. I thought I shouldn’t have accepted the invitation, I shouldn’t have gone, and that if I tried to say something everyone would say it was my own fault.”