What does Marius Borg Høiby have to say in his defense? How does he behave in court? What happens next? It is one of the most widely watched criminal trials that can be remembered in Norway.
From Wednesday there were the first answers for the country with the essentially very popular royal family. Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s son, who was accused of, among other things, violent and sexual crimes, began his statement. In tears, as Norwegian media reported from the courtroom in Oslo.
“I find it incredibly difficult to speak in front of so many people,” the 29-year-old began with the ungrateful title of “Bonus Prince” who, among other things, has to answer for rape allegationshis statement. By that he doesn’t mean the court itself.
He recalled growing up under the public eye. “I have been persecuted by the press since I was three years old,” said the now 29-year-old. “They harassed and tormented me.” His defense attorney Ellen Holager Andenæs had also criticized excessive media coverage of her client at the start of the trial the day before. He now said he would give his statement as best he could.
Lots of sex and lots of intoxication
“I’m known for being mommy’s boy, nothing else,” he explained. That’s why he had an extreme need for confirmation. The result was a lot of sex and a lot of intoxication. “I lived a party life with a lot of alcohol and drugs.” The day before the trial began, the defendant was arrested again on new allegations of violence. He is expected to remain in custody for four weeks.
The current 38 charges are being tried chronologically according to the time of the alleged crimes. On the first two days of the trial, a woman who had invited Høiby to a nightcap in Skaugum, the residence of the crown prince couple, testified in 2018 after celebrating together in Oslo.
There he is said to have performed sexual acts on her in a party basement when she was in a defenseless state – the charge, according to Norwegian law, is rape in her sleep without sexual intercourse.
The woman, whose identity is being kept secret, already knew Marius Borg Høiby, and a loose contact through chance encounters is said to have continued afterwards. She only found out about what he is said to have done to her when she actually wanted to make a statement on his behalf to the police in 2025.
Memory as a big topic
There she was shown a video and pictures from that night seven years earlier, which had been found on the defendant’s old cell phone during investigations.
Memory is a big theme in this case. The woman remembers the night of partying in Oslo, arriving at Skaugum with several other people and how the host followed her to the toilet and lifted her onto the sink. They therefore briefly had sexual intercourse, which she broke off.
Høiby said Wednesday that he doesn’t remember sex in the toilet, nor the moment later that he filmed – or even that he filmed. “But the fact that I don’t remember it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” he said. His only memory was of him and the woman lying down together and having sex.
The public prosecutor’s office accuses the Crown Princess’ son of sexual acts on defenseless women in a total of four cases, including sexual intercourse in one case. He denies criminal guilt in all cases. His defense attorney Holager Andenæs said at the start of the trial that all women had had consensual sex with Høiby before the events for which he was accused.
A shock
The woman from the 2018 case now expressed the suspicion in her statement in court that she had been drugged because she normally wakes up when someone touches her. The recordings from his cell phone came as a shock to her.
It never occurred to her that she might have been subjected to rape by Høiby. “He never did anything to me, so to speak,” she said. From previous encounters, she remembered him as super nice, charming, polite and nice.
The woman’s statements reportedly changed over time after the initial shock. She testified in court that the consensual sex was not romantic, but rather aggressive, which she did not consider as assault at the time.
The defense asked exactly how they came to the changed statements. According to reporters from the Norwegian broadcaster NRK on site, she countered by saying that she had had a lot of time to think about it afterwards.
The focus of attention in Oslo is the intimate lives of several people, including that of the defendant. He said it was difficult to talk about his sex history in front of the assembled Norwegian media. The prosecutor said he was sorry, but he would dig into the defendant’s sex life a lot during the course of the trial. “That’s how it is,” said Høiby.