A prominent gay politician who was arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography last fall has committed suicide after having admitted to the charges. Mikkel Eskil Mikkelsen, a former member of the Sámi Parliament, was arrested in November for acquiring images of children being sexually assaulted, and had led the Norwegian Sametinget’s work on gender identity reform.
Mikkelsen was arrested on November 4 by police and charged with having shared and acquired material showing sexual abuse of children. Mikkelsen admitted to the charges in the local court for Salten and Lofoten in Nordland, Northern Norway, and was facing a prison sentence of up to one year.
Den 35 år gamle kirkemusikeren og #Sametingsrådets medl, Mikkel Eskil Mikkelsen, er fengslet for overgrepsmateriale av barn. Han har hatt ansvar for oppvekst, ungdomspolitikk og LHBTQI+ i Sametingsrådet. Dét utelot #Dagsrevyen fra dagens omtale. Men, bra @NRKno identifiserer ham. pic.twitter.com/qTZG8U7pvX
— Elin Gregusson (@elingre1) November 6, 2024
However, Norwegian media has now reported that Mikkelsen committed suicide on February 13. Mikkelsen’s public defender, Mette Yvonne Larsen, confirmed the death to news outlet VG.
“As a defender, I would like to emphasize that Mikkel Eskil was charged with downloading and sharing abuse material where the level of punishment would have been in a few months to 1 year in prison. The charge was not extended at any time and the police did not investigate him for other matters either. The case was in the final phase and it was agreed that it should go as a confession case,” Larsen said.
Leading up to Mikkelsen’s suicide, national news outlet NRK reported that authorities had begun questioning him again, three months after his arrest, from a “new” approach, but did not specify the nature of the interrogation.
Mikkelsen was a prominent LGBT activist and politician who hailed from the small community of Tysfjord, a municipality with wracked by child sex abuse scandals. Despite having a population of less than 2,000 people, Tysfjord has been the location of hundreds of child sex abuse cases from 1980 to 2017. In 2016 alone, 151 criminal cases were opened by the police involving 82 victims and 92 defendants.
In 2018, Mikkelsen was named LGBT Person of the Year at the Norway’s national Gay Gala.
Mikkelsen is a former Sámi politician and member of the Sámi Council. He represented the Norwegian Samers National Association (NSR) at the Sámi Parliament, or Sametinget, from 2017 to 2024. During his time in this role, he led the Sametinget’s work on its first LGBT plan, which was published in April 2023.
In its introduction, the Sametinget report on gender equality states: “Prejudice and hatred have their roots in many centuries of Norwegianization and oppression. Social norms and gender roles have changed significantly in just a few decades. We stand in a cultural tension between traditional Sámi society and today’s expectations of modernity.”
Section 2.2, “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,” opens with a photograph of Mikkelsen receiving his awared at the 2018 Gay Gala.
The section begins by stating: “Sexual orientation and gender identity have been particularly challenging for many in Sámi communities. In the process of this work, it has become clear that it is important to develop concepts in the Sámi languages, which makes it easier and more natural to talk about topics and have important debates about sexual orientation and gender identity in Sámi.”
The passage goes on to provide a definition of “gender identity” as “a person’s internal experience of being female, male, both female and male, or neither.”
The text further describes the term “transgender,” stating: “an umbrella term for people who have an appearance or identity that expresses a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth.”
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