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Liberal deputy charged with raping 17-year-old

The Liberal Party’s deputy leader Helge Solum Larsen has resigned over allegations that he raped a 17-year-old girl at a party conference last weekend.

Published: 8 February 2012 09:52 CET
Liberal deputy charged with raping 17-year-old
Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen/Scanpix (File)

The 43-year-old Larsen is accused of having raped a member of the party’s youth wing after the county branch's annual conference in Suldal, south-western Norway, on Saturday night.

Formal charges were filed in the case on Tuesday.

At a hastily convened press conference, the party announced on Tuesday evening that party leader Trine Skei Grande was aware of the allegations and had been in touch with the 17-year-old girl.

“The Rogaland branch of the Liberal Party (Venstre) has known about the matter for a while and my client says she has received plenty of support from the party,” the girl’s lawyer, Berit Johannessen, told newspaper Verdens Gang (VG).

Local party chief Per A. Thorbjørnsen said Larsen was on sick leave had had been admitted to hospital.

He said Larsen admitted having sex with the girl but denied raping her.

VENSTRE

What next for Denmark’s Liberals after Rasmussen farewell?

The Liberal (Venstre) party, which has governed Denmark for 14 of the last 18 years, is to move forward with a new leader after two-time prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen resigned on Saturday.

Published: 2 September 2019 10:57 CEST
What next for Denmark’s Liberals after Rasmussen farewell?
Jakob Ellemann-Jensen. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix

After weeks of in-fighting and manoeuvring within the party, Rasmussen announced he would not, as he had hoped, run for re-election at the upcoming Liberal Party conference.

In an announcement on Twitter issued on Saturday morning, the former PM said that he was now facing too much opposition from the party's grass roots. 

In the run-up to Saturday's announcement, several of the party's regional groups publicly expressed their lack of confidence in Rasmussen, and the party's group in Central Jutland openly called for both him and deputy leader Kristian Jensen to resign, with several MPs joining the call.

Jensen, who has been deputy leader for ten years and long-expected to eventually take over from Rasmussen, is to follow his boss out of the door, seemingly bringing to an end his career-long ambition to lead the party.

“I have, in recent weeks, listened with increased concern to the demand from regional Liberal groups for a new start and new leadership. I repeated yesterday my offer meet that demand if Lars also did,” Jensen tweeted.

Former finance minister Jensen’s downfall appears partly to stem from increasing distance between him and Rasmussen since June’s election defeat.

Prior to the election, Rasmussen said it was not “the law of nature” that the deputy leader of a party eventually takes over as leader.

Jensen, who is the party's deputy leader, said in an August interview that he was against running another election campaign on a partnership with the Social Democrats, as Rasmussen dramatically advocated on the eve of the June 5th vote, but later apologized at the Liberals' summer meeting for breaking with the leadership line.

Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, the environment and food minister in Rasmussen's last government, is now in pole position to take over as Liberal leader.

Ellemann-Jensen, whose father, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen led the party in the 1980s and 1990s, has so far remained quiet about his prospects of taking over from Rasmussen and last week responded “not right now” when asked by broadcaster DR whether he wanted to be leader.

But Ellemann-Jensen has big shoes to fill, with Rasmussen, described as a “masterful tactician and a political technocrat” by Politiken editor Christian Jensen. The former PM has been a dominant and experienced Liberal politician since the 2000s.

He is, however expected to confirm his candidacy this week, and is seen as the figure who can unite the up to 850 delegates at the party’s national congress on September 21st.

Meanwhile, former immigration minister Inger Støjberg, a high profile on the party's right wing, has been named by several sources within the party as a strong contender for the deputy leader post, Politiken reports.

That comes after a number of other potential new deputy leaders, including Sophie Løhde and Stephanie Lose, confirmed they were not interested in taking the role.

But Ellemann-Jensen and Støjberg will need to agree on a future working relationship before the party moves forward.

Although the former is expected to extend an invitation to Støjberg opening the way for the pair to work together, their political instincts have some degree of difference, Politiken writes – not least on immigration.

READ ALSO: Former Danish PM steps down as Liberal Party leader

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