Marius Borg Høiby was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday after Oslo District Court found him guilty of two counts of rape and several other offences. The 29-year-old denied all four rape counts, but the three judges also cleared him of two other rape allegations.
The verdict gives the case its first and most decisive answer: Høiby was convicted, but not on every charge brought against him. Prosecutors had asked for seven years and seven months in prison, while his defence had argued for 18 months. The judges instead settled on a four-year term, a sentence that leaves both sides far from what they sought.
Høiby was not in court for the ruling because of unspecified health reasons and followed the hearing by video link. His absence added an unusual note to a case that has already drawn close attention because of who he is and where the allegations reached. One of the rape convictions concerned a woman on the Crown Prince's estate at Skaugum in 2018. The other involved a woman in Oslo in 2024.
The court also convicted Høiby of abusing an ex-girlfriend, Norwegian influencer Nora Haukland, and of causing serious bodily harm to another partner. At the same time, it cleared him of two further rape allegations, 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. In all, six women were part of the case, but only one was in court to hear the verdict.
That split decision matters because it shows how far the court was prepared to go and where it stopped. The judges agreed the victim had been unable to resist what had happened, but they did not accept all of the rape allegations laid before them. A 128-page ruling now sits behind the sentence, and the defence can still ask a higher court to look at it again.
Petar Sekulic, speaking for Høiby, indicated that an appeal would be in the nature of the case. Defence lawyer Ellen Holager Andenæs said she was satisfied with the acquittals, even as the prison term and rape convictions left her client facing a far heavier outcome than he had sought. Høiby was arrested in his partner's flat in the upmarket Frogner area of Oslo in August 2024, and the case has since shadowed the broader royal family even though he is not himself a royal figure. His mother married Crown Prince Haakon when he was four, and Crown Princess Mette-Marit is now very ill with a form of pulmonary fibrosis and has recently been placed on a lung transplant list.
The next move belongs to Høiby and his lawyers. If they appeal, the sentence and the convictions can be reviewed again, but any reduction would depend on what a higher court chooses to uphold, set aside, or narrow. For now, the judgment stands as a four-year prison term for two rapes, not the seven years and seven months prosecutors sought and not the 18 months the defence wanted.
