A Norwegian court is set to deliver its verdict Monday in the high-profile criminal trial of Marius Borg Hoiby, 29, the stepson of Crown Prince Haakon of Norway. Hoiby faces charges of rape, domestic violence, assault, and drug possession, among other offenses — a case that has riveted the Scandinavian nation.
Hoiby became part of the Norwegian royal family when his mother, Mette-Marit, wed Crown Prince Haakon in 2001. While he has denied the most serious allegations against him, including the rape charges, he has acknowledged guilt on some of the lesser counts.
Should the Oslo district court find him guilty on every charge, prosecutors have asked that he receive a sentence of seven years and seven months behind bars. However, the court has the authority to impose a longer or shorter term than what prosecutors requested.
The trial, which stretched across seven weeks, captivated the country with revelations about Hoiby’s drug dependency, self-recorded videos of sexual encounters, and more than 800 electronic messages submitted as evidence. Testimony in court also revealed that one of the alleged rapes occurred in the basement of the crown prince’s family residence.
Ketil Raknes, an associate professor in political communication at the Kristiania University of Applied Sciences, noted that public fascination with the case stemmed in part from the sharp contrast between the seemingly flawless image of the royal family and the troubling behavior alleged in court.
The scandal has been one of several factors dragging down the monarchy’s approval ratings. It overlapped with Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s public apology for what she called “poor judgment” in maintaining ties with the late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following his 2008 conviction.
A Norstat poll released on February 21, while the trial was still underway, found that support for keeping the monarchy had dropped to a record low of 60%, down from 70% in January. Meanwhile, the share of Norwegians favoring a different form of government climbed from 19% to 27%. By May, however, the royal family had partially recovered in public opinion, with 64% backing the monarchy and 23% preferring a different system, according to another Norstat survey.
Raknes described the situation as a compounded crisis. “It was … a perfect crisis for the royal family because they had two crises at the same time. And they had a lot of (criticism) for the way they handled the Epstein files,” he said.
The verdict arrives at a deeply painful time for Hoiby’s mother. This month, Mette-Marit was added to the national lung transplant list after her health took a severe turn for the worse. She has been living with pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive lung disease that makes breathing increasingly difficult. Her physicians have indicated that without a successful transplant, she may have roughly one year to live.
Raknes said that news of her condition appears to be softening the tone of public commentary ahead of the verdict. “The coverage is much more sober,” he said. “People are seeing: ‘OK, this is a family who’s really struggling and this is not the time for … playing … the moral card as high as we maybe have done earlier in this case.’”
