Copenhagen mayor resigns after admitting to sexual harassment

The mayor of Copenhagen resigned Monday after multiple allegations of sexual harassment emerged last week. 

“I’m terribly sorry for the women I’ve offended through my 30 years in politics,” Danish Mayor Frank Jensen, 59, said following his resignation from all city and party positions, according to Jylland’s Posten, a Danish media outlet.

News of the allegations broke on Danish television and in newspapers of Jensen licking, groping, kissing and leg fondling women over the weekend, according to The New York Times.

In a Facebook post, the former mayor addressed the allegations, saying that he experienced these encounters differently than his accusers. 

“There are episodes and details that have been experienced differently. But what remains is that some women have experienced that I have crossed their boundaries,” he wrote, according to Jylland’s Posten. 

Jensen, a center-left Social Democrat, was heavily involved in Danish progressive politics for nearly three decades.

He served twice as a government minister and January marked his 10th year serving in as Copenhagen’s mayor. 

Allegations against the former mayor come amid a point of reckoning over cultural equality between men and women in the country. For some time, Denmark has touted its gender equality laws, but some say that the country still has to put this notion into practice. 

In 2017, Sonja Marie Jensen, a member of the Social Democrat party on the council in a central Danish city spoke about her experience with sexual harassment in politics by other council members. She was one of the first to speak out about the subject in Danish politics, according to the Times. 

In August, Danish actress Sofie Linde alleged at an award show that a TV “hot shot” said that he would ruin her career if she did not perform oral sex on him, according to the Times.