The last time Torben Hersborg appeared in court, the British justice system didn’t even have a name for his twisted crimes.
After the Danish-born osteopath was caught filming up the skirts of two young women on an escalator at Leicester Square underground station in July 1995, an initial charge of outraging public decency was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Hersborg, then 34, was charged instead with ‘behaving in an indecent manner’ under what were then London Transport by-laws. He was fined £500 and banned from the tube network, in effect receiving little more than a rap on the knuckles from the bench at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court.
And so the ‘skirt pest’ was quickly forgotten. No matter that police, who searched Hersborg’s upmarket Bloomsbury mews home, also unearthed a library of fetish films showing only the tops of women’s legs and their buttocks.
No matter, too, that he became aggressive when arrested and, as the prosecuting barrister put it, ‘did not see anything wrong’ with his behaviour. He claimed he’d got the idea from watching pornography on satellite TV; he’d filmed with a hidden camcorder between the legs of ‘two young girls’ for ‘illicit thrills’.
But perhaps most astonishing of all is that Hersborg was able to carry on working, slipping through the net of the professional regulator, the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC).
Over the three decades which followed, Hersborg went on to become one of the country’s most successful – and wealthy – osteopaths. But while treating a host of celebrity clients including TV presenter Fearne Cotton and actress Anna Friel, he was living a depraved double life as one of Britain’s most prolific voyeurs.
This week, almost 30 years to the day of his last court appearance, the 64-year-old married father of two was jailed for three years and five months after admitting taking images and videos of around 2,000 women without their knowledge and for his own sexual gratification.
Torben Hersborg pictured with Danish actor and former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen, who was his childhood friend
Hersborg had numerous celebrity clients, including radio presenterFearne Cotton
But questions remain, not least how, despite his earlier conviction, he was able to carry on working as a health professional, a career which gave him access to female patients – often dressed in little more than underwear.
Some of those women are now among Hersborg’s thousands of victims. So too are the female London University students he regularly spied on through the floor-to-ceiling windows of their halls of residence, filming them in states of undress using a camcorder and telescope set up on the back seat of his car.
The CPS said this week that because the images he made do not show the women’s faces, police have so far been unable to identify those he preyed on, leaving those who came into contact with him in a state of agonising doubt.
Among those who visited Hersborg at his practice – The Central London Osteopathy and Sports Injury Clinic in Hoxton, East London – was author and broadcaster Lesley-Ann Jones who became his patient in 2021 after injuring her back in a fall down stairs.
She told the Mail this week how she had trusted softly-spoken Hersborg, to the extent that she thought nothing of it when, at the start of each 20-minute £75 session, he asked her to undress down to her bra and knickers and remained in the room while she did so.
‘He would regularly ask me to touch my toes and stand directly behind me while I was doing it,’ she said. ‘Was he filming me? The truth is I’ll probably never know. I felt comfortable and safe with him. Torben was very friendly and assertive. I came to think of him as a friend. And he was a genius when it came to fixing my back.’
At times, when Hersborg manipulated her neck and spine, he leant and sometimes ‘virtually lay on top of me’. Lesley-Ann assumed it was a normal part of osteopathy.
Now she is unsure. ‘Knowing how wrong I was about him has made me doubt myself,’ she said. ‘I can’t get rid of the images in my head. I’m terrified thinking about what footage he might have made of me. I feel absolutely betrayed and abused by him. I’m so freaked out.’
Hersborg was sentenced to three years and five months in prison at Snaresbrook Crown Court this week after admitting eight counts of voyeurism
Hersborg, described as ‘one of London’s most prolific voyeurs’, pictured with musicians Ronnie Wood and Beverley Knight
Internationally renowned Hersborg was held in high esteem by hundreds of clients including dozens of celebrities. Pop star Grace Jones flew him around the world when she was recording and touring.
Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning actress Anna Friel left a glowing review on his website, describing him as ‘the only man who touches my back’ and writing: ‘When I was told my back would take two weeks to fix, Torben had me on my feet in two days.’
Others on his client list included Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and Strictly Come Dancing contestant Viscountess Weymouth.
Another left stunned by revelations about Hersborg is former world tennis No.1 and fellow Dane Caroline Wozniacki.
She told Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet last month that she was ‘shocked’ to learn the truth about Hersborg and that while, to her knowledge, she had never experienced anything negative at his hands, ‘it is clear that it is terrible’.
Hersborg, report those that crossed paths with him, often appeared dazzled by celebrity.
A childhood friend of Danish actor and former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen, his Instagram page was jam-packed with snaps of himself with his star patients. He was also a prolific name-dropper.
Another of his former patients said this week that she recalled Hersborg showing off photos on his phone for five minutes while she sat there in her bra and knickers ‘feeling a bit exposed’. ‘I’m wondering if it was a ploy to film/photograph my body for an extended period,’ she said. ‘I’m left feeling violated.’
Torben Hersborg also posted a picture with Strictly Come Dancing contestant Viscountess Emma Weymouth
Lesley-Ann says that Hersborg ‘enjoyed aligning himself with celebrities. It gave him an aura of legitimacy.’
As well as flying around the world to visit clients, Hersborg, who moved to the UK in 1984, clearly enjoyed the financial fruits of his work.
He trained at the European School of Osteopathy in Maidstone, Kent, and qualified in 1991. At the time of his first conviction, he was practising from clinics in both London and Crawley, West Sussex, and earning enough to live in a property in central London now worth £1.6million.
His 1995 ‘indecency’ conviction did nothing to halt his ascent, despite the fact that – as his lawyer told JPs – he had volunteered his suspension from what was then the General Council of Practising Osteopaths, possibly as a way to avoid a disciplinary hearing.
That body was replaced in 1997 by a more powerful statutory regulator, the General Osteopathic Council. Osteopaths were given until 2000 to comply with a legal requirement to register. Records show that Hersborg did so in May that year.
Astonishingly, a spokesperson for the GOsC said his past conviction ‘would have been known, at the time, to those processing his application to join the Register’. The spokesperson added: ‘At that time the decision was taken that he was fit to join the Register and therefore fit to practise.’
Within two years of his ‘upskirting’ crime, Hersborg was hailed a miracle worker by GB sprinter Iwan Thomas, who had been on the verge of pulling out of the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur because of a bad back but went on to win gold in the 400metres thanks to his treatment.
‘He was working on me from 11pm until four in the morning, trying to locate the problem,’ Thomas told journalists after the race. ‘Then something suddenly clicked and it was alright again. The pain simply disappeared. Talk about a miracle cure.’
Hersborg’s osteopathy clinic in central London where he filmed many of his victims
Later that year, Hersborg got married and went on to have two children who are now in their 20s. A neighbour of the family’s £1.2million modern dockside property in East London, said that ‘polite and courteous’ Hersborg ‘had the aura of someone who was doing well in life’. ‘It’s so shocking. He seemed a perfectly ordinary man.’ He was well-dressed, said the neighbour, and drove around in a flashy car.
It was that vehicle, a dark green Lexus, which attracted the attention of a member of the public on December 21 last year.
Hersborg was lying on the back seat, which he’d covered in black bin liners, wearing a balaclava and black gloves and using a telescope and a camcorder to film young women undressing through the windows of a university hall of residence near King’s Cross.
The man, who called police that night, said he had seen the same person lurking around the student flats over the course of four years. He had previously reported him but the police, it was later said in court, were either too slow to arrive or never came at all.
After he was arrested, Hersborg claim he’d pulled over to ‘relax’ after a judo session but after arresting him police found disturbing videos on his camera, taken over three consecutive nights. When his home was raided, police found a collection of cameras and storage devices containing the films he made of his thousands of victims. He used sophisticated equipment to zoom in on women on beaches, at bus stops and while crossing the road.
Hersborg told police he began filming women in their homes when the thrill of ‘upskirting’ began to wear off. He did so on more than 500 occasions, spying through gaps in the curtains and capturing his victims getting in and out of the shower and engaging in sexual acts.
In what the judge described as a ‘gross breach of trust’, he concealed cameras in his consulting room and manipulated women’s bodies while treating them in order to film their private areas.
And while Hersborg, who admitted multiple counts of voyeurism, was jailed at Snaresbrook Crown Court this week – and made the subject of a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order banning him from carrying camera equipment in public and placed on the sex offenders’ register – in all likelihood, he will be free by next year.
Danish tennis playerCaroline Wozniacki was a patient of Hersborg and was ‘shocked’ when she learned of his crimes
‘His sentence is pathetic when you think about how many women were involved and how long it went on for,’ says Lesley-Ann Jones. ‘It’s no punishment at all.’
What the future holds for Hersborg remains to be seen. He has been suspended by the GOsC, which says it only became aware of his latest crimes at the end of 2024. Its Chief Executive Matthew Redford told the Mail this week: ‘My firm expectation is that Torben Hersborg will be removed from the Register by our independent Professional Conduct Committee.’
Despite his sentence, Hersborg’s practice is still open for business. The sign above the entrance that used to boast his name and the words ‘trusted by Olympic athletes’ has been replaced.
He resigned as a director in January this year but his 61-year-old wife Minerva, the practice manager, remains a director. So too does his 26-year-old son.
In a statement read out in court Hersborg, who appeared from prison by video-link, revealed his wife is divorcing him and that he has ‘broken the hearts’ of his children. As his sentence was read out, he collapsed, a moment of high drama which seemed to epitomise his fall from grace.
Judge Timothy Greene halted proceedings while a doctor tended to a minor cut on Hersborg’s head. When they resumed, the osteopath said the stress of the court case had caused him to collapse.
‘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 said via a statement to the court. ‘I know I’ll never do this again.’
Amid all this self-pity, he made no mention of the impact of his hideous crimes on victims, or spared a thought for the thousands of women who will now never know for sure if they were among them.
