The son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been sentenced to four years in prison after an Oslo court found him guilty of two counts of rape, in a scandal that has shaken the Norwegian monarchy.
Marius Borg Høiby, 29, was convicted on June 15 of two rapes, repeated domestic abuse against an ex-girlfriend, issuing threats and traffic violations. He was acquitted of two further counts of rape.
Høiby is Mette-Marit’s son from a relationship that predated her 2001 marriage to Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the Norwegian throne. He holds no royal title and is not part of the royal household.
One of the rapes for which he was convicted took place in 2018 at the crown prince couple’s official residence in Oslo. The court also ordered him to pay compensation to four women, including two former girlfriends.
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of seven years and seven months. Høiby had pleaded not guilty to the most serious charges, including rape, while admitting some lesser offences, and can appeal the verdict.
He faced 40 charges in total, ranging from sexual offences to vandalism and drug crimes. The Oslo District Court delivered its ruling after a trial that ran for around seven weeks.
Before proceedings began, Crown Prince Haakon stressed that his stepson would answer to the courts like any other citizen. “He is a citizen of Norway and, as such, has the same responsibilities as everyone else — as well as the same rights,” he said.
Neither Haakon nor Mette-Marit attended the trial, which gripped the country as evidence including self-recorded videos of sexual encounters and more than 800 electronic messages was presented to the court.
The case has been widely framed in Norway as a rare test of whether a figure linked to the royal family would be treated the same as anyone else before the law.
The verdict has come amid difficult circumstances for Mette-Marit, who this month was placed on Norway’s lung transplant list as she battles pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive condition that makes breathing increasingly hard.
The princess has also faced scrutiny over a previously undisclosed friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the late American financier and convicted sex offender, an episode she has acknowledged showed poor judgement.
The ruling is not yet final. Both the prosecution and the defence have two weeks to lodge an appeal.
