Government of Iceland/Ministry of Education and Children
Iceland’s Minister of Children Affairs, Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir, resigned abruptly after revealing that she had a relationship with a 15-year-old boy when she was 22. The politician, now 58, said the relationship started when she was a counselor at the church group that the boy, Eirík Ásmundsson, attended. She later gave birth to his child when he was 16 and she was 23. “It’s been 36 years, a lot of things change in that time and I would definitely have dealt with these issues differently today,” Thórsdóttir told an Icelandic outlet RUV. At the time the age of consent in Iceland was 14, but Thórsdóttir was his counselor, making the relationship illegal. Although their relationship was a secret, she noted that Ásmundsson was present at his child’s birth and spent the first year with him. Allegedly, he even paid child support for the next 18 years—despite Thórsdóttir restricting his access to their child after she met and married her now husband. A relative of Ásmundsson attempted to contact the Icelandic prime minister twice last week regarding the relationship.
