Criminal status Incarcerated | ||
Occupation None. Former physician. Criminal penalty Preventive detention with a term of 10 years | ||
The Helicopter doctor case (Norwegian: Helikopterlege-saken) was a case of child sexual abuse in Norway that received broad media attention from 2010 to 2012. A physician from Hamar, Thor Aage Mathisen (born 1972), was arrested in October 2010 and charged with sexually abusing several underage girls, including 7 cases of rape, and of blackmailing a number of men. At the time, he worked as a consultant at Innlandet Hospital and worked part-time as a helicopter doctor. He thus became known in the media as "the helicopter doctor." In 2011 he was convicted by Hedmarken District Court and again by Eidsivating Court of Appeal to 10 years preventive detention, to pay his victims 2,4 million NOK and deprived of his medical authorization ("struck off") on an indefinite basis. In March 2012 the Supreme Court of Norway rejected to hear his appeal. He now serves his sentence in the high security Ila Detention and Security Prison outside Oslo.
During the trial, Mathisen was diagnosed by the court-appointed experts, psychiatrist Michael Setsaas and psychologist Jim Aage Nøttestad, with paedophilia and antisocial personality disorder with sadomasochistic traits. According to the experts, he will need treatment for up to 20 years for his diagnoses.
Mathisen didn't get accepted by a medical school in Norway, and studied medicine abroad.