Norwegian crown princess's son found guilty of two counts of rape

Marius Borg Høiby, the 29-year-old son of Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit, has been found guilty of two counts of rape and sentenced to four years in prison.

The three judges in courtroom 250 at Oslo District Court cleared him of two other counts of rape, but found him guilty of many of the other offences of which he had been accused.

Høiby was not in court for the verdict for unspecified health reasons, but joined the session via video link.

Prosecutors had called for Høiby to be given seven years and seven months in prison. His defence lawyers had called for a lesser term of 18 months and have said he will appeal.

Even though Marius Borg Høiby is not himself a royal figure, the trial has cast a shadow over the broader royal family. His mother married Crown Prince Haakon when he was four, and he grew up within the family. The palace has said it will not comment on Monday's verdict.

Mette-Marit is very ill with a form of pulmonary fibrosis and has recently been placed on a lung transplant list.

Her son's lawyers have repeatedly sought his release from prison so he could spend time with his mother because of her declining health.

After the verdict, Høiby's defence lawyer Petar Sekulic again asked the court for his release, however the court rejected the plea late on Monday, ruling that there was a risk that he might contact a woman he was convicted of assaulting, and who he had broken a restraining order to see in the past.

One of the three judges in the trial, Judge Jon Sverdrup Efjestad, began the session early on Monday with a summary of their conclusions, before going into a 128-page ruling explaining the verdict.

Høiby had denied all four counts of rape, but the judges convicted him of raping two women, including one on the Crown Prince's estate at Skaugum in 2018 and another involving a woman in Oslo in 2024.

He was also convicted of abusing an ex-girlfriend, Norwegian influencer Nora Haukland and of causing serious bodily harm to another partner, in whose flat he was arrested in the upmarket Frogner area of Oslo in August 2024.

However, he was cleared of two further rapes, involving a woman he met at a hotel in Oslo in November 2024 and another he met while on holiday in the Lofoten islands in 2023.

Sekulic said it was "in the nature of the case that there could be an appeal".

His defence colleague Ellen Holager Andenæs told reporters they were satisfied with the acquittals but were more critical of other aspects of the verdict.

Both lawyers then went to discuss the verdict with Høiby at Ila prison and detention centre outside Oslo.

The case against Høiby involved six women, but only one of the women was in court to hear the verdict and she was seen crying as Høiby was found guilty of raping her.

Prosecutors said she had been either incapacitated or asleep when she was raped after a party in Oslo in March 2024, and after they had engaged in consensual sex.

The case rested on videos that Høiby had filmed at the time and, giving evidence in February, the woman told the court that she was asleep and would never have allowed it to happen.

The court agreed the victim had been unable to resist what had happened.

All four rape charges involved women who had been either asleep or incapacitated at the time. The women had been unaware of the incidents until police found videos on Høiby's phone after his arrest.

The judges also found it proven that the woman in the 2018 rape case had been asleep at the time and unable to resist Høiby. She only found out that Høiby had filmed what had happened last year.

Høiby was also convicted of several offences including abuse and reckless behaviour towards the sixth woman in the case, who became known as the Frogner woman because of the area of Oslo where she lived.

The court ruled he should pay a total of 640,000 kroner (£50,000; €57,000) in compensation to four of the women, including Nora Haukland, the only woman judges ruled could be named in the case.

Anja Emilie Kruse, a criminologist at the University of Oslo who researches sexual violence and attended part of the trial, believes there is a frustration in parts of Norwegian society that the courts seem unable to deliver justice in rape cases.

"The burden of evidence needs to be high," she concedes. However, most rape allegations by women are placed on file by police, Kruse has told the BBC, and the state prosecutor told the court on Monday that one in three Norwegian rape cases that do reach court ends in acquittal.

"These two women who today experienced their cases ending in acquittal are far from alone in having that experience, and the rape cases that do make it to court are just a kind of tip of the iceberg,” says Kruse.

The palace said in an email to the BBC that "the matter has been considered by the courts, and we have no comment on the outcome". It has already made clear there will be no further statement on Mette-Marit's declining health until she has had a lung transplant.

"There is no doubt that this case has affected people's perception of the royal family," said Caroline Vagle, royal correspondent for Se og Hør magazine.

That was further compounded by revelations on the eve of the trial that the crown princess had had a three-year friendship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But Vagle believes the mood now is completely different: "Her health is the main concern now - and it overshadows everything else."

Peggy Simcic Brønn, who is a specialist in reputation and public relations and professor emirata at BI Norwegian Business School, believes the royal family is in the midst of an institutional crisis.

"[The Høiby case] is a tragedy and a crisis for any family," she said.

"The way they handle it is let the person be convicted, let him serve his sentence, but try to make amends as a family for what that person has done to their reputation and the impact on the royal house itself."