\u201cI\u2019m mostly known as my mother\u2019s son, not anything else. So I\u2019ve had an extreme need for recognition my whole life,\u201d he told the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that manifested itself in a lot of sex, a lot of drugs, and a lot of alcohol,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A court sketch depicts Marius Borg Hoiby, son of Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit during the first day of a trial in Oslo. Photo \/ Ane Hem, AFP<\/p>\n
Hoiby was raised by the royal couple alongside his step-siblings Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus, now aged 22 and 20, but unlike them has no official public role.<\/p>\n
He neither works nor studies and admitted in August 2024 to struggling \u201cfor a long time with substance abuse\u201d.<\/p>\n
Norwegian media have previously reported that he hangs out with gang members and moves in the same circles as \u201cnotorious criminals\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Big black hole\u2019<\/p>\n
Earlier Wednesday (local time), the first alleged victim to testify claimed he raped her at an after-party in the basement of the royal Skaugum estate outside Oslo in December 2018, when, according to Hoiby himself, his parents were upstairs.<\/p>\n
She said they had a brief, consensual sexual encounter, which she cut off.<\/p>\n
Police then contacted her years later when they discovered footage and images on his phone showing what they described as Hoiby raping her while she slept \u2013 events she had no recollection of, describing \u201ca big black hole\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it. I couldn\u2019t believe that Marius would do something like that to me. It\u2019s a betrayal and a shock,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Pictures and footage shown to the court were not shared with the media, which has also been restricted from publishing the names of the alleged victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at my face: do I look conscious? You can clearly see that I\u2019m totally unconscious. It almost looks like I\u2019m not breathing,\u201d she told the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect that I probably ingested something without my knowledge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Asked if she thought she had been drugged, she replied: \u201cThat\u2019s what I believe. 100 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defence was quick to point out that she had said the opposite when questioned by police, that she did not think she had been drugged.<\/p>\n
Hoiby meanwhile testified that he did not recall the exact events of that night but said the sexual relations with her had been consensual.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember taking [the pictures] but, like, we had sex fully awake and willingly. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not in the habit of having sex with women who are not awake,\u201d he insisted, acknowledging nonetheless that the woman appeared to be asleep in the images.<\/p>\n
His testimony was to continue on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Opposing views<\/p>\n
The four alleged rapes all took place after consensual sex, often following evenings of heavy drinking when the women were not in a state to defend themselves, the prosecution claimed Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The defence has argued that Hoiby \u201cperceived all of the acts as perfectly normal and consensual sexual relations\u201d.<\/p>\n
The scandal \u2013 the biggest in the history of the Norwegian monarchy, according to experts \u2013 has tarnished the image of the royal family and plunged it into turmoil.<\/p>\n
Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway with Crown Prince Haakon of Norway. Photo \/ Odd Andersen, AFP<\/p>\n
Mette-Marit and Haakon do not plan to attend the seven-week trial, which has drawn massive media attention.<\/p>\n
The palace confirmed on Wednesday that the crown princess had postponed a planned private trip abroad.<\/p>\n
Torn between her roles as mother and future queen, Mette-Marit, 52, is fighting battles on several other fronts.<\/p>\n
She has come under heavy fire over recently unsealed US documents revealing her close friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
She also suffers from an incurable lung disease and will likely need a lung transplant in the future.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m mostly known as my mother\u2019s son, not anything else. So I\u2019ve had an extreme need for recognition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39491,16489,5811,52688,3013,10808,15159,28428,638,21662,152913,545,3273,42,424,5971,43,152912,1118,3766,28821,3366,34458,51246,31340,9855,22639,40,38,41,39,1354],"class_list":["post-269411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-39491","tag-admits","tag-admitted","tag-blaming","tag-but","tag-crown","tag-denied","tag-denies","tag-estate","tag-excess","tag-excesses","tag-extreme","tag-future","tag-headlines","tag-life","tag-need","tag-news","tag-norways","tag-of","tag-parents","tag-princess","tag-queen","tag-rape","tag-raping","tag-recognition","tag-royal","tag-son","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}