Son of Norway’s crown princess arrested on suspicion of rape

Norway’s royal family found itself embroiled in an intensifying scandal Tuesday after the son of the country’s crown princess was arrested on suspicion of rape.

Marius Borg Høiby, 27, was arrested Monday on a preliminary charge of having “sexual intercourse with someone who is unconscious or for other reasons is unable to resist the act,” police in the capital, Oslo, said in a statement early Tuesday.

He was also charged with one count of “abuse in close relationships,” violating a restraining order and driving without a valid driver’s license, police said Tuesday.

A preliminary charge, which comes before a formal charge, allows law enforcement to detain a suspect for further investigation.

The charges add to the growing list of charges against Borg Høiby, an Oslo socialite who is the eldest child of Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit from a relationship before her marriage to Crown Prince Haakon.

He is being held by police in Oslo.

“Høiby only pleads guilty to a case of one incident of bodily harm against his last girlfriend, criminal damage in her apartment and a threat. For the other circumstances, he does not admit criminal guilt,” his defense attorney Øyvind Bratlien told NBC News by email on Tuesday.

“We do not have a comment on this case and direct all questions to police and attorney for Marius Borg Høiby,” Simen Sund, communications adviser for the royal palace, said by phone.

It was the police who brought the provisional rape charge, not the alleged victim, her lawyer Hege Salomon told Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. Salomon said that the woman “has no relation with the other women in the case” and that she “is having a hard time.”

Borg Høiby is being investigated over allegations of abuse from four women.

He was first arrested in August after a violent incident at an apartment in the capitol’s Frogner neighborhood, and he has pleaded guilty to charges of bodily harm and property damage. Police said the suspicions relating to the August incident included domestic abuse.

Borg Høiby has also pleaded guilty to charges of having made a death threat against a man in separate incident. And he has pleaded notguilty to separate charges related to two past relationships.

According to police, Borg Høiby was in a car with the alleged victim from the August incident when he was arrested Monday.

Borg Høiby apologized for the events leading up to his August arrest in a statement to NRK at the time, blaming it on “being intoxicated with alcohol and cocaine after an argument” and “several mental illnesses” for which he planned to “resume treatment.”

He was 4 when his mother married Prince Haakon in 2001, and despite not being an official member of the royal family, he has attended events and lived on royal property with his mother, his stepfather and two half-siblings, Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus.

During the royal couple’s engagement, Mette-Marit was criticized in the media as an inappropriate choice for future queen because she had a child with a man convicted of drug possession, as well as because of her own “wild past” involving rumors of partying and drug-taking.

Mette-Marit responded with a televised news conference the week before the 2001 wedding, at which she condemned drugs and apologized for having “lived a dissolute life” before she met the prince, and the media ultimately praised her for her “Cinderella” story.

Borg Høiby has previously been in the spotlight for selling designer items on a Norwegian reselling app and listing the address as the royal palace. He played a walk-on role on a popular Norwegian teenage television show and even appeared in an American Vogue feature in 2018 giving tips on the most stylish spots to spend time in Oslo.

He is a mainstay of Norwegian tabloid media along with his stepfather’s elder sister, Princess Märtha Louise, who married an American self-proclaimed “shaman” in August and has claimed that she can communicate with angels.

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