Abuse of patients with "sex therapy", the judges: "Absurd practice, but it is not violence"

The therapy he inflicted on his patients is "absurd", but it is not violence.

The judges of the Bari Review Court are convinced of this, called to decide on the request for detention in prison for the Bari gynecologist Giovanni Miniello. Request rejected.

Miniello had ended up in the spotlight after a report aired in the show "Le Iene" which highlighted the "sex therapy" he proposed to his patients to treat papillomavirus: after the arrest, reports of alleged abuses suffered by other women, bringing the number of alleged victims to 16 and to 29 the disputed episodes of sexual violence and injuries.

Judges Giulia Romanazzi, Giuseppe Montemurro and Arcangela Stefania Romanelli, however, rejected the appeal of the Prosecutor, confirming the assessments made by the investigating judge in November in the arrest order and therefore the detention under house arrest for two episodes of aggravated sexual violence out of two patients that Miniello would have groped during the visits.

IT IS NOT VIOLENCE - They did not consider the hypothesis that even the proposal of sexual relations can be configured as violence exists. According to the judges, that is, "even if deontologically incorrect, Miniello's conduct is neither irresistibly compulsory nor carried out with taking advantage of the conditions of physical or mental inferiority of the patients", so much so that "the alternative therapeutic proposal had appeared so surreal "to the patients to refuse it.

From the statements of the women themselves, the judges point out, "the perception of the improbability, bordering on the absurd, that such a sexual practice could have a curative effect emerges". For the defense of the suspect, the lawyer Roberto Eustachio Sisto, "the provision of the Review and that of the investigating judge, were placed in perfect line with the fundamental principles in the matter of personal freedom". In support of the accusation, the prosecutor Roberto Rossi, the deputy Giuseppe Maralfa and the two prosecutors who coordinate the investigation, Grazia Errede and Larissa Catella, had also argued that in the proposal for "sex therapy" made by Miniello one of the cornerstones of medicine: informed consent of patients.

But the judges disagree on this: "The prospect not of a most unconventional and ordinarily unknown medical therapy, but of non-existent reality data instilled in patients in full possession of their own intellectual and sensory faculties and able to perfectly understanding the absurd meaning of the gesture - they say - cannot be qualified in terms of medical activity which requires the patient's informed consent for its validity and lawfulness ". The Prosecutor also asked to consider the complaints of two other patients who reported long after the facts, only when they understood - according to the prosecutors - to have been victims of abuse.

"The victims - the judges write in this regard - had well understood the trespassing of the limits of Miniello's diagnostic and therapeutic activity" already during the visits and "it is not clear how it can reasonably be argued that they have become aware of having suffered sexual harassment only after a long time.

(Unioneonline / D)