**BREAKING NEWS** Marius Borg Høiby Guilty: Rape Convictions, Four-Year Sentence, Norway Royal Trial Verdict

0:03 Caloroga Shark Media. Hello and welcome to your Palace Intrigue. I am your host and Mark Francis. This is a special bulletin regarding the Norwegian case of Marius borg Hoebi. You can follow this case on Crown and Controversy Norway's Royal Rebels. Just search for Crown and Controversy Norway if you'd like to follow this case further. We thought we'd bring you this episode just as a tease and update for or you Palace Intrigue royal fans, So please be sure and check out Crown and Controversy Norway wherever you get you a podcast. Here's the story. At eight point thirty this morning, in court Room two point fifty of the Oslo District Court, Judge Jon spurred Efierstad took his seat behind the bench and began reading from a document that ran to one hundred and twenty eight pages. The room had been full since before seven thirty. Journalists had queued up outside the building in the early morning darkness waiting for the doors to open. Camera crews from across Europe had been set up outside the courthouse since the night before. Inside the gallery was packed. The one seat that was conspicuously absent was the defendant's own Marius Borghibi followed the proceedings by video link from Iller prison for health reasons. According to his lawyers, he could not be seen or heard in the court room. After months of preparation, six weeks of trial, seventy witnesses, eight hundred and thirty

1:35 pages of electronic messages, and more than ten thousand pages of evidence, the verdict in the most significant criminal case in the modern history of the Norwegian royal family had arrived. The judge's opening words, translated from the Norwegian, were these, the verdict is unanimous. Marius Borghoebi was found guilty of thirty four of the thirty nine charges considered by the court. He was sentenced to four years in prison. The most serious charges, the rape counts, produced a split result. He faced four counts of rape in total. The court convicted him on two and acquitted him on two. Both convictions involved women who were sleeping were so heavily incapacitated at the time that they were unable to resist what happened to them. The first conviction related to an incident in the basement of Skalcom, the royal family's residence outside Oslo.

2:26 In December twenty eighteen, the court heard that video evidence had been presented in the case. Judge Efustad, reading from the verdict, described the footage in terms that left no ambiguity about what it showed. She had closed eyes, she lay in the same position over time. There were no sounds or movements indicating she was awake. Her own reaction when she was shown the recordings in the interrogation when she discovered what had been done to her while she slept, was, the judge said, consistent with a woman who had no awareness of what had happened. The second rape conviction related to a woman at an after in Oslo in the spring of twenty twenty four. The circumstances were similar. He was acquitted on the rape charge concerning a woman in Lofeton in the autumn of twenty twenty three and a woman at a hotel in Oslo November of twenty twenty four.

3:14 The acquittal on the hotel charge did not mean the woman was disbelieved entirely. Even on that count, Hoyby was convicted of sexually offensive behavior for having filmed her without her knowledge or consent. Beyond the rape convictions. The court found him guilty of domestic violence in a close relationship against his former girlfriend, Nora Hauckland, the only victim who had been publicly named throughout the proceedings. The court found it proven that he had hit her repeatedly in the face with his fist, choked her, slammed a door in her face, and thrown objects at her. It found that he had tried to control her behavior, what she wore, how she acted, and that she had lived with a genuine, justified fear of further violence. He was also convicted of serious bodily harm against another former partner, physical violence threat, multiple counts of sexually offensive behavior for filming women without their consent, and three counts of violating restraining orders. He lost his driving license, three iPhones, a MacBook, his snapjet account, and his Facebook account were all confiscated by the court.

4:15 He was ordered to pay compensation totaling six hundred and forty thousand Norwegian kroner roughly sixty one thousand US dollars to four of the women, Norah Haukland, the Skalkin woman, the woman from the after Party, and the woman referred to throughout the trial as the Frogner woman who was the target of his domestic violence. The prosecution had asked for seven years and seven months. The defense had argued for eighteen months on the charges he had admitted. With acquittal on the rape counts, The court landed four years, a sentence that reflects the gravity of the two rape convictions while accounting for the acquittals on the other two. His defense team, immediately after the verdict was read filed a request for Hoeby's release from pre trial custody. He is desperate to be with his mother, his lawyers said outside the court. A custody hearing was convened. As of this recording, the result of that hearing has not been confirmed publicly. The reactions from the victims and their legal representatives emerged within the hour. Nora Halcland's lawyers, John Christian Elden and Heidi Razvang released a statement on her behalf.

5:15 They said that Halcland was relieved that the court had fully accepted her account. They described the cases an enormous burden on everyone involved, with extraordinarily extensive evidence, and said she hoped the verdict was set a final full stop on the matter. They added the domestic violence in close relationships is a serious social problem that can be very difficult to prove, and that Halclan's conviction for abuse in close relationships was a relief for the woman. Elden said she had been unwillingly drawn into this case and had appeared in court to give evidence as the legal system required. He described it as an enormous burden and a serious betrayal of trust by Hoebi. He said the court appeared to have made a thorough and well reasoned assessment. He then said she hoped that the final word had now been spoken that Marius will receive the helping needs so that this does not happen to anyone else. For the woman acquitted on at the hotel, Elton said that although the high burden of proof had not been found to have been met by the court, this does not meaning she was not believed. He said they would review the judgment and that the case might not yet be finally settled.

6:18 The Palace issued a single line the matter has been considered by the courts and the Royal House has no comment on the outcome. More in just a moment. The scale of what the Norwegian court system processed in order to reach. This verdict is worth pausing on because it is not something that becomes routinely simple. Because the trial lasted six weeks, over seventy witnesses appeared before the court, eight hundred and thirty pages of electronic messages were entered into evidence. The trial examined accusations of rape spanning a period between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty four. It examined a pattern of domestic violence running from mid twenty two through late twenty three, and examined footage that Weeby had recorded of women without their knowledge or consent. It examined hundreds of messages between him and a former partner that prosecutors argued painted a clear picture of control, intimidation, and escalating violence. What emerged from it all, as Norwegian journalist and commentator Martin rl Dahell described in Doug Bladette, was a portrait of a party culture on Oslo's West Side in which casual sexual encounters and escalating drug use went hand in hand, and in which a man with access to royal residences, royal adjacency, and the protections of extreme social privilege had used all of that to harm women.

7:35 Reportedly over a period of years. Royal historian Ula Jorgen Schuln Hansen told The New York Times this morning that Hoeby had been treated neither better nor harsher than anyone else would have been in the justice system. He said, it is in the extreme cases the principles are put to the test, and that those principles had now been tested and held. Associate Professor Catherine Holter at the Norwegian Police University Colon offered a refinement of that assessment. She agreed that Hoebi had not received special treatment. She noted, however, that he had in one sense been treated like other celebrities, in that celebrity cases tend to run longer in court than cases that do not receive media attention. The distinction matters.

8:16 Equal treatment under the law and equivalent experience of the justice system are not always the same thing. News website Netavism described today as a dramatic day for the kingdom. The Norwegian royal family has had difficult years before. It has survived scandals before, but it has never before had a member of its household, even an unofficial one, even a man. The palace has been at pains to describe as simply a Norwegian citizen convicted of rape in a Norwegian court. That the conviction happened at Skalcum, in the basement of the Crown Prince's own home in twenty eighteen while Marius was living on the royal estate adds a dimension to this verdict that goes beyond the legal findings. The Palace's insistence that Marius is not a member of the royal houses constitutionally accurate, but one of the rapes for which he was convicted happened in a room beneath the roof the royal house provided him. There are two things left unresolved that will determine how this story develops in the weeks ahead. The first is whether Hoybe or the prosecution or both will appeal the verdict. Both sides have two weeks from today to review the one hundred and twenty eight page judgment and decide. His defense team said outside the court this morning that they would sit down and read the judgment carefully in its entirety before deciding.

9:29 The prosecution has also indicated it may appeal on the charges where acquittals were entered. That means the four year sentence handed down this morning may not be the final word. The second is Mathame Marie. She is on a lung transplant waiting list. She is at home at Scalcolm. A lung becomes available and there is a six hour window from harvest to surgery ground. Prince Argan has cleared his official diary. Princess Ingrid Alexandra has transferred her studies from Sydney to Oslo. Prince Severe Magnus has been told to remain within reach. On Tuesday of last week, as King Harold and Queen Sonya were traveling through northern Norway on an official visit, they drove past a hillside where someone had painted the words God Bedroom, Meta Marite, get well, Meta Marite in large letters facing the road. Queen Sonya told the press that it was touching King Harold, so they truly appreciated it. When a reporter asked how the King himself was holding up, he said simply, one day at a time. He is eighteen nine years old. His daughter in law is waiting for a transplant, his grandson was just convicted of rape in an Oslow court room.

10:31 His wife's heart has required emergency attention twice in the last year. He is still carrying out official duties and trying in a way that only someone who has done the job for thirty five years fully understands to hold the institution together through the worst period it has faced in modern history. One day at a time, five words from an old king doing his best. That is the Norwegian monarchy today, damaged, strained, under pressure from multiple directions simultaneously, and still somehow going. And there you have it. Thanks for listening to this special Norwegian Royal bulletin on palace intrigue. For more of this story, please check out Crown and Controversy Norway wherever you get your podcasts, and mind Francis my thanks to John McDermott. This is palace intrigue in good terms.