Oslo District Court convicted Marius Borg Høiby of two counts of rape on Monday and sentenced him to four years in prison, handing down a verdict that also cleared him of two other rape charges. Three judges in courtroom 250 said he had raped two women, including one at the Crown Prince’s estate at Skaugum in 2018 and another in Oslo in 2024.
The ruling also found him guilty of abusing former girlfriend Nora Haukland and causing serious bodily harm to another partner. Høiby, who was not in court for unspecified health reasons and joined the verdict session by video link, had denied all four rape counts. Prosecutors had asked for seven years and seven months in prison, while his defence lawyers sought 18 months.
The case centred on six women, but only one was in court to hear the verdict. She cried as the judges found Høiby guilty of raping her, in a case prosecutors said involved a woman who was either incapacitated or asleep after a party in Oslo in March 2024. She told the court in February that she was asleep and would never have agreed to what happened, and the judges said they accepted that she had been unable to resist.
The court also cleared Høiby of a rape involving a woman he met at a hotel in Oslo in November 2024 and of another involving a woman he met while on holiday in the Lofoten islands in 2023. He was arrested in his partner’s flat in Oslo’s upmarket Frogner area in August 2024, a case that has since drawn heavy attention because of his ties to Norway’s royal family.
Høiby is not a royal figure himself, but he grew up inside the wider royal household after his mother married Crown Prince Haakon when he was four. The trial has cast a shadow over the family, and his mother, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, is seriously ill with pulmonary fibrosis and has recently been placed on a lung transplant list. His lawyers had repeatedly pressed for his release from prison so he could spend time with her, but Monday’s judgment leaves him facing the prison term unless his defence team successfully appeals.
Petar Sekulic, one of Høiby’s defence lawyers, said it was in the nature of the case that an appeal could follow. For now, the verdict closes one of Norway’s most closely watched criminal cases and puts the next move squarely in the hands of Høiby’s legal team.
