(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Her job was to help educate Iceland’s youth. And she failed miserably.
The head of Iceland’s Ministry of Education and Children’s Affairs, Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir, resigned Thursday after admitting she had a baby with a minor 30 years ago.
At the time, she was the 22-year-old leader of a youth group at a religious congregation. Meanwhile, the minor was just 15.
Thórsdóttir, now 58, is a member of Iceland’s leftist People’s Party.
The minor, identified as Eirík Ásmundsson, was forced to pay child support and later banned from seeing their child after Thórsdóttir married another man.
Preventing a parent from seeing their child is widely condemned by her own party, which has considered legislation to criminalize such actions, Icelandic news outlet RUV reported.
“I understand… what it looks like,” Thórsdóttir confessed about her relationship with Ásmundsson, according to the New York Post.
She said it was “very difficult to get the right story across in the news today.”
She continued, “It’s been 36 years, a lot of things change in that time and I would definitely have dealt with these issues differently today.”
According to RUV, Ásmundsson turned to the youth congregation for refuge during his difficult childhood. This is when he met Thórsdóttir, who later restricted his custody visits to just hours per month. Such visits occurred at her home and under her husband’s supervision.
While Iceland’s age of consent is 15, teachers or mentors are forbidden from having sexual relations with their students.
Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir accepted Thórsdóttir’s resignation, saying in a statement: “This is a very personal matter [and] out of respect for the person concerned, I will not comment on the substance.”
It is not clear whether Thórsdóttir is currently under investigation.
