The son of Norway’s crown princess was detained on suspicion of rape on Tuesday, drawing the country’s royal family into an ever-deepening crisis.
Marius Borg H iby, 27, was taken into custody on Monday on a preliminary charge of engaging in “sexual intercourse with someone who is unconscious or for other reasons is unable to resist the act,” according to a statement released by Oslo police early on Tuesday.
According to police on Tuesday, he was also accused of driving without a valid driver’s license, breaking a restraining order, and one count of “abuse in close relationships.”
Prior to filing a formal charge, a preliminary charge enables law enforcement to hold a person while they conduct additional investigation.
Borg H. Iby, an Oslo socialite and the eldest child of Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit from a previous relationship with Crown Prince Haakon, is facing more charges.
Police in Oslo are holding him.
“Hiby merely enters a guilty plea to a charge involving a threat, criminal damage to his ex-girlfriend’s flat, and one instance of bodily harm against her. “He does not admit criminal guilt for the other circumstances,” his defense lawyer, Yvind Bratlien, emailed NBC News on Tuesday.
By phone, Simen Sund, the royal palace’s communications adviser, stated, “We have no comment on this case and direct all questions to police and attorney for Marius Borg H iby.”
Her attorney, Hege Salomon, informed the Norwegian daily Aftenposten that the police, not the putative victim, were the ones who filed the preliminary rape charge. According to Salomon, the woman is struggling and has no connection to the other ladies in the case.
Borg Hiby is under investigation for allegedly abusing four women.
He entered a guilty plea to counts of bodily harm and property damage after being initially taken into custody in August following a heated altercation at an apartment in the Frogner neighborhood of the capital. According to the police, domestic abuse was one of the suspicions connected to the August event.
Additionally, Borg H. Iby entered a guilty plea to charges of threatening to kill a man in a different incident. Additionally, he entered a not guilty plea to two distinct accusations pertaining to two previous relationships.
Police claim that when Borg H. Iby was taken into custody on Monday, he was in a car with the suspected victim from the August incident.
In a statement to NRK at the time, Borg H. Iby expressed regret for the circumstances surrounding his detention in August, attributing it to “being intoxicated with alcohol and cocaine after an argument” and “several mental illnesses” for which he intended to “resume treatment.”
Although he is not a formal part of the royal family, he has lived on royal property with his mother, stepfather, and two half-siblings, Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus, since he was four years old when his mother married Prince Haakon in 2001.
Because she had a kid with a man convicted of drug possession and because of her own “wild past” that included accusations of partying and drug usage, Mette-Marit was portrayed in the media as an unfit candidate for the role of future queen during the royal couple’s engagement.
The week before the 2001 wedding, Mette-Marit responded with a televised press conference in which she apologized for having “lived a dissolute life” prior to meeting the prince and denounced drugs. In the end, the media hailed her for her “Cinderella” narrative.
Previously, Borg Hiby made headlines when he listed the address as the royal palace when selling designer goods on a Norwegian resale app. He appeared in an American Vogue piece in 2018 offering advice on the trendiest places to hang out in Oslo, and he had a walk-on appearance on a popular Norwegian adolescent television show.
Together with Princess M rtha Louise, his stepfather’s older sister, who married an American self-styled “shaman” in August and has asserted that she can speak with angels, he is a staple of Norwegian tabloid media.
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