Son of Norway’s future queen denies alleged rape victim was sleeping

OSLO – The son of Norway’s crown princess on Feb 10 denied in court that a woman he is accused of raping was asleep during sex, an event she earlier called her “worst nightmare”.

Marius Borg Hoiby – Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s 29-year-old son from a relationship before her 2001 marriage to heir apparent Crown Prince Haakon – is on trial facing 38 charges, including raping four women while they were asleep or unconscious.

Central to the case has been whether or not the women were in a condition to object to having sex.

Hoiby has pleaded guilty to several relatively minor offences, but denies the rapes.

He faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted.

On Feb 10, a second alleged victim testified about what the prosecution said was a rape on Oct 8, 2023, following an after-party in an apartment in Norway’s Lofoten Islands, which Hoiby and his stepfather were visiting on a surfing trip.

After consensual sex, the alleged victim – a young woman he met on Tinder – said she woke up after Hoiby had resumed sexual relations with her which were not consensual.

“That’s always been my worst nightmare,” she told the court in Oslo, recalling how she closed her eyes “so I wouldn’t have to take part in my own assault”.

“I remember waking up when he was already underway. I thought, ‘I don’t understand how someone can have sex with someone who’s sleeping’,” she said.

“Then, I mostly had the feeling I was dissociating, leaving my own body,” she added.

“It was painful, my body wasn’t ready for it.”

To prove that the sex occurred when she was not in a state to say no, the prosecution submitted as evidence a video that Hoiby had filmed of the events with his phone, later discovered by police.

Prosecutor Sturla Henriksbo said the five-second video showed the young woman asleep at the time.

The alleged victim also spoke out against the images, which she said were filmed without her knowledge – for which Hoiby has also been charged.

The prosecution also presented data from her fitness watch as proof that she was asleep at the time.

‘Why the hell?’

During cross examination, the defence confronted the woman about contradictions between her testimony on Feb 10 and police questioning during the investigation, when she initially said she didn’t think Hoiby had done anything legally wrong.

“She was awake when I had sex with her,” Hoiby testified, before quickly correcting himself: “When we had sex together.”

“I don’t have sex with women who are asleep,” he reiterated.

“I don’t understand: if we had sex three or four times before, and I woke her up each time, why the hell would I have had sex with her without waking her the last time?” he said.

Hoiby was arrested on Aug 4, 2024 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the night before, in what would trigger the most serious scandal in the history of the Norwegian monarchy.

The investigation into that incident uncovered a slew of other suspected offences, including video footage on his phone and laptop of what police believed to be rapes.

When confronted by police, some of the women were unaware of what had happened to them or that the actions could be considered criminal.

None of the four filed rape charges against Hoiby, but police did.

Last week, the court heard testimony from another young woman whom prosecutors argued Hoiby raped while she was passed out at another after-party in the basement of his parents’ royal estate outside Oslo in December 2018.

She said she was “100 per cent” convinced she had been drugged, a claim Hoiby vehemently denied.

The defence has denied all of the rape charges, arguing last week that they were all “perfectly normal and consensual sexual relations”. AFP