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 given four years in prison.
The three judges at Oslo District Court (courtroom 250) cleared him of two other rape charges but found him guilty of several other offences he was accused of.
Høiby was not physically present in court when the verdict was announced; he attended the hearing through video link.
Prosecutors had asked for a much harsher sentence of seven years and seven months in prison, while his defence lawyers argued for a lighter sentence of 18 months. They also said they may appeal the ruling.
Although Høiby grew up in the royal family after his mother married Crown Prince Haakon when he was four, he is not a royal figure and has no official title or succession rights.
His mother, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, is seriously ill with pulmonary fibrosis and has recently been placed on a lung transplant list. His lawyers have repeatedly requested his release so he could spend time with her due to her declining health.
After the verdict, his defence lawyer Petar Sekulic again asked the court for his release.
Judge Jon Sverdrup Efjestad opened the session by summarising the court’s conclusions before presenting a detailed 128-page ruling.
Høiby denied all four rape charges, but the court convicted him of raping two women, including one incident at the Crown Prince’s estate in Skaugum in 2018 and another in Oslo in 2024.
He was also found guilty of abusing a former girlfriend, Norwegian influencer Nora Haukland.
However, he was cleared of two other rape allegations involving a woman he met at a hotel in Oslo in November 2024 and another woman he met during a holiday in the Lofoten Islands in 2023.
The case involved six women in total, but only one attended court to hear the verdict.
Prosecutors said one victim had been unable to resist because she was asleep or incapacitated following a party in Oslo in March 2024. They said evidence included videos filmed by Høiby.
The woman told the court she was asleep and would never have consented. The court agreed that the victim was unable to resist what happened.
