Denmark: Considers removing scantily clad images after shock revelation about travel king Simon Spies
Simon Spies was known for his boundless behavior and interest in young girls. He founded the large travel company Spies Rejser in 1956 and died of liver disease in 1984, aged 62. He was often called “Denmark’s travel king”.
Petter Stordalen bought a travel company in 2021.
“Morning bun ladies”
The DR documentary “Spies and the morning bun ladies” revealed on Monday how the Spies director was paid as young female employees for sexual services and to commit violence against them.
It is former employees, including women who had relationships with him in the 60s and 70s, who tell about Spies’ progress. Most of them were then between 15 and 18 years old.
– When they got too old, wanted something else or weren’t good enough, they were just replaced with someone else, says Lise Lotte Breeden, who at the time was a director’s apprentice at Spies Rejser, in the documentary for the Danish channel.
Paid to do violence
The travel king’s former employees and close friends said in the documentary that Spies offered the young girls payment to commit violence. It was about between 10,000 and 35,000 Danish kroner if he was allowed to beat them or break their arms.
According to Charlotte Nielsen, one of the former “morning bun ladies”, it was well known that you could make money if you let him give you a beating and bruises.
– He had to cross boundaries. He was extremely transgressive, she said in the documentary. In 1983, he married Janni Brodersen, 40 years his junior. She inherited the company when he died a year later.
Going through the archives
There are lots of pictures of Spies and the young, usually scantily clad girls taken in the 1960s and 70s. After the revelations in the documentary, the Danish news and image agency Ritzau Scanpix announces that they will go through its archives to see if there are images that should either be removed completely or masked, according to the Danish Journalist.
– We have to look at it. We must get an overview of the material and see what kind of character it has, says Kristian Djurhuus, editor-in-chief at Ritzau Scanpix to The journalist.
Vandalism of Simon Spies Square
Among the other consequences of the documentary is that someone in Spie’s hometown of Helsingør has torn down the signs on what is called Simon Spies Plads. After the documentary, the mayor of Helsingør, Benedikte Kiær, advocated a debate on whether the square should continue to bear his name.
– This has happened in our time and therefore it is relevant to discuss what we should do with the place. After all, what he has done is, and was also at the time, illegal. It is abuse of very young girls, pimping and violence for payment, she says TV 2 Lorry.