Torben Stig Hersborg was a dedicated family man and a hard-working osteopath at the top of his profession; internationally renowned and an enviable client list of athletes and celebrities.
But behind the façade was a dark side: he spent his spare time upskirting random women, covertly filming women as they undressed, and even spying on victims inside their own homes.
After being caught, Hersborg admitted himself that he had been living a double life: “I feel like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, he said. “It’s really not a nice feeling.”
His fall from grace was completed on Tuesday at Snaresbrook crown court, as the 64-year-old was sentenced to three years and five months in prison for eight counts of voyeurism, with thousands of victims in his wake.
Questions remain, though, how a man dubbed “one of London’s most prolific voyeurs” slipped under the radar for so many years.
Captured
Hersborg was caught by police on December 21 last year, lying on the back seat of his distinctive green Lexus while parked up late at night in north London.
He had a camcorder and telescopic equipment with him, which allowed him to peep through the windows of a student halls of residence opposite as young women got undressed.
Hersborg was wearing black gloves at the time, and had laid down black bin liners over the car seat where he lay – a chilling measure which has never been explained in the court hearings that followed.
Hersborg tried to explain his unusual presence by telling officers that he had been to his club in Chelsea for a drink after a judo training session, he had got tired on the drive back so stopped to “relax” near King’s Cross as it was halfway to his home in Wapping, east London.
But the videos on his camcorder told a different story.
Over three nights in December last year, Hersborg had secretly recorded students at the halls – one young women wearing just a t-shirt, whose buttocks were recorded as she bent over inside her home, another woman had been recorded sitting on her bed, while a third had been captured by Hersborg in a bra as she dressed.
A concerned member of the public had called police several times to report a suspicious man, lurking near to the student flats while apparently taking photos or filming. He had noticed the same man appearing sporadically over the course of four years.
Court hearings were told that Hersborg escaped capture several times as police were slow to arrive, or never came at all.
But on December 21 he was taken into custody, and it quickly became apparent that the three camcorder videos were just the tip of the iceberg.
Osteopath to the stars
Hersborg was born in Denmark and was a childhood friend in Copenhagen of the actor Mads Mikkelsen. The two men apparently had stayed in touch and recently posed together for a snap on Hersborg’s now-deleted Instagram account.
He moved to the UK in 1984, and eventually struck up a career as an osteopath, which led to him establishing the Central London Osteopathy and Sports Injury Clinic in Old Street.
Prior to his arrest, Hersborg was a sought-after clinician who boasted the likes of Olympic sprinter Yohan Blake, Oscar-winning actor Mark Rylance, and musician Ronnie Wood in his contacts book.
His clinic provided services to male players at Italian Serie A football club Brescia, as well as to the Danish Tennis Federation, and Hersborg made an appearance on ITV’s breakfast show to give out his professional advice.
His wife played a part in the thriving business, handling the accounts, and together they had a settled home life with two grown-up children.
Even after he had been charged with the initial three voyeurism charges, he was not deserted by some of his clients and friends, who wrote letters of support which were then presented in court.
His children wrote to the judge saying they are “standing by” their father, while a friend from the judo club hailed Hersborg’s good nature, for once offering a free treatment session to a homeless person in pain.
An unnamed Olympic athlete wrote a letter saying Hersborg has a “heart of gold”, and detailed free treatment he had given throughout her career.
But Judge Timothy Greene noted that some of the letters had come in before the full extent of Hersborg’s crimes were revealed, and remarked of the Olympic athlete: “I wonder if she still feels the same.”
One of London’s most prolific voyeurs
After his initial arrest, police raided Hersborg’s family home of the last 31 years and seized a collection of cameras and storage devices.
Police and prosecutors were slow to examine the contents of the devices, and Hersborg – through his lawyers – asked to be sentenced on what had already been found. But a judge agreed to a delay, with strong hints that Hersborg had been preying on women for years.
He was then charged with five extra counts of voyeurism covering more than 2000 incidents when he had spied on women.
The videos showed Hersborg upskirting women in public as they waited for a bus or crossed the road, he covertly recorded topless women on the beach, and he used sophisticated camera equipment to zoom in on exposed parts of his victim’s bodies.
And chillingly, Hersborg’s activities outside the university halls were very far from a few isolated incidents.
The court heard he took to filming inside women’s homes when the thrill of his other covert filming wore off, doing it on more than 500 occasions.
“Filming women in houses is more exciting”, he told police, “because you don’t have as much control.” Hersborg said selected particular homes to target when he found them “interesting”.
Between 2016 and 2024, Hersborg used his telescopic camera equipment to film inside random women’s homes, capturing them naked or semi-naked and they got in and out of the shower, in their lounges, and in their bedrooms.
He spied through gaps in the curtains to capture some of his victims engaging in sexual acts.
“You had worked out that students in the building felt they didn’t need to have the curtains or blinds drawn, they thought they wouldn’t be seen”, said the judge, of his crimes at the halls of residence. “You had worked out that with the right equipment and laying on the back seat, you could in fact film them in their private moments.”
Gross breach of trust
Among his crimes, Hersborg has also admitted filming women who came to his clinic in Old Street for treatment, in what the judge described as a “gross breach of trust”.
“You betrayed your clients who trusted you and relied on you”, he said.
Hersborg used a hidden camera to record sessions, creating videos which showed women undressing with their breasts exposed.
The osteopath is seen to “manipulate” the women’s bodies while treating them, said prosecutor Chris Hewertson, “so that their breasts are visible on camera” and also in order to film their private areas when their underwear move to the side.
Hersborg’s licence to practice as an osteopath was suspended in the wake of his arrest, something of a symbolic gesture as he was, by this time, in Pentonville Prison.
It then came to light that Hersborg had a secret hiding in his past, that raised serious questions as to how he became such a respected member of society with patients who trusted him implicitly.
Upskirting shame
In February, The Standard revealed that Hersborg was convicted in 1995 of indecency after being spotted upskirting women on the Tube.
Inspired by watching pornography on TV, Hersborg took out camcorder hidden in a plastic bag to film women as they used the escalator on the London Underground system, according to reports of his court hearing.
He was pictured walking into the London courthouse which was told Hersborg was arrested at Leicester Square station on July 2, 1995, and initially told police he “did not see anything wrong” with his activities.
He had reportedly toured Tube stations and Camden market in north London, standing at the bottom of the stairs while not making any attempt to go up, “paying particular attention to women going up the escalator”.
His lawyer told the court he did it “simply for illicit thrills”, and Hersborg left court with a £500 fine.
The conviction did not appear to hinder his professional development, he was allowed on to the osteopath register despite the regulator at the time knowing about the incident, and he did not face any reviews of his suitability over the years that followed.
The General Osteopathic Council, the current regulator, says it does not regularly review historic files, and it insists that no complaints were raised against Hersborg in the past.
It added that osteopaths applying to join the register now have to undergo enhanced background checks.
Curiously, at his sentencing hearing this week, the CPS said Hersborg had no previous convictions, having apparently been unable to find a record of the 1995 court appearance.
Stressed and shamed
Hersborg’s sentencing hearing had to be stopped midway through when the defendant slowly rocked back on his chair on the videolink until his head was out of view, then he suddenly collapsed to the floor.
A prison medic was called and Hersborg was treated to a cut on his head, and he said the stress of the court hearing had caused him to collapse.
His barrister, Adrian Eissa KC, said Hersborg feels “profound guilt and shame on a daily basis”, his marriage has collapsed, and his professional life lies in ruins.
“He does have a different side to him – for a large part of his life, he has been a productive, hard-working, family man”, he said.
“Unfortunately, this is a terrible fatal flaw which has served to destroy his life on many levels.”
The judge then read out Hersborg’s own assessment of himself: “I feel like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, it’s really not a nice feeling.
“I’m so embarrassed about myself, I’m not able to speak to anyone.”
He added: “I’m in the deepest hole I can ever get into, and there’s only one way out.
“I will make it out of this hole…I know I will never do this again.”
He said his wife is seeking a divorce and he has “broken the hearts of my kids” – “they only saw the perfect dad and the perfect person in me, and I love them to bits.”
Harm
Hersborg is likely to be set free from prison after serving 40 per cent of his sentence of three years and five months.
He will be under a sexual harm prevention order for ten years, banning him from carrying camera equipment in public, and he has an indefinite place on the sex offenders register.
The harm he has done, however, is very difficult to quantify.
Police have not gone through the process of trying to identify the victims, when faced with thousands of images and videos, including some of women who Hersborg randomly came across in the street. There is also a desire not to cause extra anguish.
As the judge observed: “This was offending on a huge scale, over a long period of time - your offending has so many victims.”
Women who were spied on at home may never know for sure that they were victims, but when men as outwardly respectable and successful as Hersborg are revealed as prolific offenders, many women will now fear who else could be creeping about in the darkness.
