He pleaded "incomprehension and awkwardness".
The jurors did not hear him.
A man midwife was sentenced, in the night from Friday to Saturday, to twelve years of criminal imprisonment by the Criminal Court of Hérault for eleven rapes and a sexual assault on patients.
The attorney general had requested twenty years of criminal imprisonment, the maximum penalty in this case.
“Under cover of familiarity, familiarity, this man broke his word he owed to his patients.
He made victims of them, locked in their guilt.
He did not hesitate to take advantage of vulnerable women, pregnant or in the middle of the baby blues who came to consult for that, ”Albert Cantinol denounced.
"Massages" and vaginal penetrations
Judged since Wednesday, Lionel Charvin, 49, was accused of having imposed on patients, between 2013 and 2016, gestures of a sexual nature, in particular "massages" of the clitoris, perineum and breasts and digital penetrations of the vagina , under cover of medical procedures during preparation for childbirth or postnatal follow-up.
"Since 2001, he has had to manage the pregnancies and deliveries of 2,500 women," pleaded his lawyer, Me Maryse Pechevis.
For him, the sexual is an organ, just like the bladder.
He doesn't see it any other way.
Her only goal was to want to rebuild these women and their well-being.
"
"I have a share of responsibility"
“I am stunned and I can't speak anymore.
And I want to apologize once again to my patients, ”said the accused before the court, composed of five professional magistrates.
Several of his patients said they were "paralyzed" during the rapes and did not dare to say anything at first while suffering long-term psychological consequences.
They all spoke of a betrayed “trust” when they found themselves in a period of great vulnerability.
During the examination on the merits on Friday, the accused answered the questions of the president and the lawyers with ambiguity: “Of course I heard the sufferings of the patients and I am sorry.
I have some responsibility for this suffering, but at no time was it intentional on my part.
I loved these patients.
"
The midwife was particularly prevalent in the Saint Roch polyclinic, south of Montpellier.
(Screenshot) Google street view
A psychiatrist described him as "an aggressor of opportunity who acts by the diversion of the confidence placed in him" this man whose childhood was marked by violence and alcoholism of his father and several incest.
The expert described his personality as "perverse".
"In haptonomy, we do not insert the fingers into the patient's vagina"
This practitioner, the only male midwife in Montpellier, father of three children, practiced his activity coupled with a specialty in haptonomy, as a liberal in a Montpellier office and as an employee in the Saint-Roch clinic in Montpellier until 'in 2016.
Heard as an expert, the gynecologist and haptonome Denise Bouchut-Reveyrand recalled, on Wednesday, the basics of this practice: “In haptonomy, the patient is never naked, we never touch the breasts, we do not massage, we do not insert the fingers into the patient's vagina ”, and the presence of the father is essential, she enumerated.
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Sentenced for twelve facts, the investigation had shown that he had been implicated in 2009: he had then invoked a practice close to shiatsu, and the complaint had been closed.
Then in 2013, by two anonymous letters addressed to the Council of the Order of Midwives, civil party in this case.
But he had once again escaped all sanction.
Before the new complaints which ultimately led to the trial.