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 verdict was delivered by three judges at Oslo District Court, who acquitted Høiby of two other rape charges but convicted him of several other offences included in the case.
Høiby did not attend the court session in person due to unspecified health reasons, but followed the proceedings by video link.
Prosecutors had sought a prison sentence of seven years and seven months, while his defence team had argued for a shorter term of 18 months. His lawyers have said he will appeal the ruling.
Although Høiby does not hold a royal title, the case has drawn widespread attention in Norway and placed pressure on the wider royal family.
His mother married Crown Prince Haakon when Høiby was four years old, and he grew up closely connected to the royal household. The palace said it would not comment on Monday’s verdict.
Crown Princess Mette-Marit is seriously ill with pulmonary fibrosis and has recently been placed on a lung transplant list.
Høiby’s lawyers have repeatedly requested his release from prison so he could spend time with his mother amid her worsening health.
Following the verdict, defence lawyer Petar Sekulic again asked the court to release Høiby. However, the request was rejected late on Monday after the court ruled there was a risk he could contact a woman he was convicted of assaulting, despite having previously breached a restraining order involving her.
Judge Jon Sverdrup Efjestad, one of the three judges in the case, opened Monday’s session by outlining the court’s conclusions before presenting details from the 128-page ruling.
Høiby had denied all four rape charges. However, the judges found him guilty of raping two women, including one incident on Crown Prince Haakon’s estate at Skaugum in 2018 and another involving a woman in Oslo in 2024.
He was also convicted of abusing a former girlfriend, Norwegian influencer Nora Haukland, as well as causing serious bodily harm to another partner. He was arrested at that woman’s flat in the affluent Frogner district of Oslo in August 2024.
The court cleared him of two other rape allegations, including one involving a woman he met at a hotel in Oslo in November 2024 and another involving a woman 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 fellow defence lawyer, Ellen Holager Andenæs, told reporters that the legal team was satisfied with the acquittals, but had concerns over other parts of the ruling.
The two lawyers later travelled to Ila prison and detention centre outside Oslo to discuss the verdict with Høiby.
The case involved six women, though only one of them was present in court when the verdict was read. She was seen crying after Høiby was found guilty of raping her.
Prosecutors said the woman had been either asleep or incapacitated when she was raped after a party in Oslo in March 2024, following consensual sex.
The prosecution relied heavily on videos filmed by Høiby at the time. During her testimony in February, the woman told the court she had been asleep and would never have consented to what happened.
The court accepted that the victim had been unable to resist during the incident.
All four rape charges involved women who were allegedly asleep or incapacitated at the time. The women were not aware of the incidents until police discovered videos on Høiby’s phone following his arrest.
The judges also ruled that the woman in the 2018 rape case had been asleep and unable to resist Høiby. She only learned last year that Høiby had filmed the incident.
Høiby was further convicted of several offences, including abuse and reckless behaviour towards the sixth woman in the case, who became known as the Frogner woman due to the Oslo district where she lived.
The court ordered Høiby to pay a total of 640,000 kroner, or around £50,000 and €57,000, in compensation to four of the women. They included Nora Haukland, the only woman the judges ruled could be publicly named in the case.
