Former Minister refutes accusations of sexual offences
Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson and his wife Bryndís Schram. Ómar Óskarsson
Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson, former Foreign Minister and ambassador released a press statement yesterday denying all claims of sexual misconduct following claims by numerous women, including his daughter, his wife's sister and his wife's niece and his former students.
Hannibalsson writes, "Recently media and social media have published stories by named women about offensive behaviour by myself against women, some of these stories almost half a century old. The common factor in these stories is that they are complete fabrication or a total distortion of the truth."
Hannibalsson furthermore says that the stories are rooted in an old family drama related to his daughter's mental illness. "We will not sue our daughter," he says.
Newspaper Stundin was the first to reveal allegations of Hannibalsson's alleged sexual violence and harassment through the course of 50 years, and includes interviews with four women, the last harassment case being from last summer.
Baldvinsson came under fire in 2012 when his wife's niece accused him of sexual harassment from the time that she was 10 years old until she was a teenager and had letters from him to prove her case that included graphic sexual content. The charges were dropped mainly as the alleged incidents described had occurred abroad and not in Iceland.
His daughter Aldis Schram went public last week on Rúv national radio saying that her father had her incarcerated in a mental hospital when she threatened to go public about his sexual abuse. She presented documentation attesting to the fact that she has never suffered from mental illness.
Today Schram, an actress and a lawyer made a public statement on Facebook following her father's statement.
"You, father of all lies, Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson, are a sociopathic sexual offender. Sue me. If you do, I will present documentation about your abuse of power and silencing tactics to the police, to the chief medical office, the state prosecutor and the the Ministry of Justice. And I will win. If not in the Icelandic court, then in the court of European human rights."
