Downfall of Norwegian Royal’s rapist son who filmed attacks on sleeping women

THE British Royal Family has been rocked by the horrific allegations surrounding the disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

But while Britain’s eyes have been fixed on the fallout, an explosive royal crisis has been brewing in Scandinavia – with their royal family reputation coming under fire.

Marius Borg Høiby, the 29-year-old son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit, has today been sentenced to four years in prison after being found guilty of two counts of rape.

One of the sexual assaults took place on the Crown Prince’s estate at Skaugum in 2018, and the second involved a woman in Oslo in 2024.

In addition to this, he was also convicted of abusing an ex-girlfriend, Norwegian influencer Nora Haukland.

He was also convicted of causing serious bodily harm to another partner, in whose flat he was arrested in the upmarket Frogner area of Oslo in August 2024.

Høiby had been facing 40 charges during his sensational six-week trial, and was found guilty of 34 counts.

Tuning in via video link due to unspecified health reasons, Høiby, whose lawyers have claimed will appeal, denied all counts of rape.

Despite him not being a royal figure – his mother married Crown Prince Haakon when he was four in 2001 – his trial has cast a shadow over the Norwegian royals, with some claiming it has been “damaging”.

While the palace has said it will not comment on the 128-page court verdict, Haakon distanced Høiby from the monarchy, saying: “He is a citizen of Norway and, as such, has the same responsibilities as everyone else.”

Royal commentator Tove Taalesen told The Sun: “Marius has been a controversial public figure for years, and there had been rumours and concerns about his lifestyle long before the police investigation became public.

“What surprised people was not that there were problems, but the extent of the allegations that eventually emerged in court.”

The initial public downfall of Høiby was triggered by a highly volatile incident on August 4, 2024, at an apartment in the Frogner district of Oslo.

Police were called to the property following a night-time domestic dispute between Høiby and a woman with whom he was in a relationship.

The woman was found with injuries, including a concussion and a wound to the back of her head, and Høiby was detained at the scene.

The indictment claims he also caused severe property damage, including tearing down a chandelier, throwing and embedding a knife in a bedroom wall and shattering a mirror.

Following the August 2024 apartment incident, Høiby released a statement, which said: “Last weekend, something happened that should never have happened.

“I committed bodily harm and destroyed objects in an apartment in the influence of alcohol and cocaine after an argument.

“I have struggled with drugs for a long time, and have been in treatment for that earlier. I will now return to treatment, and take it very seriously.”

When Oslo police seized and searched Høiby’s mobile phone and laptop following that domestic violence arrest, they uncovered a digital trail of self-recorded videos and photos.

This evidence exposed incidents where Høiby had filmed himself engaging in sexual acts with women who were passed out, sleeping, or heavily incapacitated.

Royal correspondent for Se og Hør magazine, Caroline Vagle, told The Sun it had been known that he lived a lifestyle involving a lot of partying and drug use, but beyond that, the public was not aware of much else.

She added: “That is why the revelations came as a great shock.”

In December 2018, an afterparty was held at the Skaugum estate, the official private residence of Høiby’s mother and stepfather – while they were upstairs.

During the party, Høiby sexually assaulted a female guest in the basement of the main house while she was heavily incapacitated.

She only discovered that the assault had occurred after police uncovered the video recordings of it on Høiby’s computer and phone during their investigation.

When asked by a judge about the videos and photos found on his phone, Høiby said: “I don’t even remember taking them.”

In the verdict, the judge noted that the footage clearly supported the victim’s testimony, stating that her eyes were closed, she lay in the same position over a period of time, and she showed absolutely no reaction to touch, movement, or sound that would indicate she was awake.

The court found him guilty of rape for this specific incident.

The four original rape indictments involved women who had been either asleep or incapacitated at the time, but he was acquitted on two.

Aside from laying bare Høiby’s self-recorded footage of intimate encounters, his phone also detailed his struggles with drug addiction.

During the trial, he spoke about growing up in the royal spotlight without an official title.

He told the court: “I’m mostly known as my mother’s son, not anything else.

“So I’ve had an extreme need for recognition my whole life, and that manifested itself in a lot of sex, a lot of drugs and a lot of alcohol.”

Beyond the violent and sexual offenses, Høiby confessed to a serious narcotics charge dating back to 2020, which involved the transport of 3.5kg of marijuana.

Ulf André Andersen, former Editor-in-Chief of Se og Hør, told The Sun: “I do think this case has been damaging.

“Regardless of the legal outcome, the case has reinforced a narrative that Marius Borg Høiby’s life and behaviour have created significant challenges for the Norwegian monarchy.

“The Royal Family now faces the difficult task of rebuilding trust with parts of the Norwegian public.”

Høiby’s mother, Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit faced her own Prince Andrew moment as she was quizzed about her three-year friendship with Jeffrey Epstein in a dramatic TV interview.

Much like the ex-Duke of York’s train-wreck Newsnight interview in 2019, the Scandinavian royal’s on-air reckoning was the culmination of a huge build-up of media scrutiny over her links to the convicted paedophile.

The princess was forced to apologise after the Epstein files revealed a string of suggestive messages between the royal and the late sex offender.

She told Epstein “you make me smile” after the paedophile financier revealed he was on a “wife hunt” in flirty email exchanges.

Mette-Marit also wrote to him saying that Paris was “good for adultery” and suggested that Scandinavian women made “better wife material”.

In the interview the princess maintained she “didn’t know he was a sex offender or a predator” during their friendship, which included hundreds of emails between 2011 and 2014.

Mette claimed was manipulated and tricked by Epstein, in an emotional attempt to contain fallout from her links to the late sex offender.

She welled up in the interview, alongside her husband Crown Prince Haakon, saying that she regrets her “very friendly relationship” with the disgraced financier.

Mette-Marit, who is very ill with a form of pulmonary fibrosis and has recently been placed on a lung transplant list, said “of course, I wish I had never met him”.

Caroline claims that public sentiment “has shifted somewhat” since it became known how seriously ill the Crown Princess is, and that “it is literally a matter of life and death.”

She commented: “Health outweighs everything else, and there is now a great deal of sympathy and goodwill from the public.”

There have been raised eyebrows on the other side of the family tree, with Princess Märtha Louise, the only daughter of King Harald V.

Märtha Louise gave up royal duties in 2022, and in 2024 tied the knot with Durek Verrett, a Hollywood shaman ‘healer’ who charges $2,000 (£1,760) a session, and counts Gwyneth Paltrow among his clients.

The princess was previously married to author Ari Behn, with whom she shared three children.

The couple, who wed in 2002, separated in 2016 and divorced a year later. Ari died aged 47 in 2019 after taking his own life on Christmas Day.

The former royal claims she can speak to the dead, and started a now-closed “Angel School” in the capital of Oslo, aimed at sharing her paranormal expertise with others.

In 2021, Verrett stated that he considers himself to be a reptilian, or lizard person, claiming: “I’m a hybrid species of reptilian and Andromeda, and I also hold the energies of the ancient spirits from the old world.”