Ten women have filed a complaint against this midwife who was already convicted last year of raping several patients.
In February 2021, Lionel Charvin, a former midwife, was sentenced to 12 years in prison by
the criminal court of Hérault for 11 rapes. Assaults committed on former patients as part of his practice between 2013 and 2016. A year later, this highly publicized case is experiencing new developments. As France Bleu Hérault reveals, citing a source close to the investigation, ten new rape complaints have been filed against the maieutician and a new judicial investigation has been opened.
He had diverted medical gestures
The complainants accuse Lionel Charvin of having diverted medical acts into sexual gestures, during childbirth preparation sessions or postpartum perineal rehabilitation. Facts that would have taken place between 2010 and 2016 and therefore concern attacks even older than those for which the midwife was convicted last year. The police invited any other victims to come forward to the investigators of the departmental security of Hérault.
Victims in a situation of great vulnerability
During Lionel Charvin’s trial in 2021, Advocate General Albert Cantinol had requested 20 years of criminal imprisonment against him. “Under the guise of familiarity, familiarity, this man broke the 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“, he had declared.
“Since 2001, he has had to manage the pregnancies and deliveries of 2,500 women. For him, the sexual belongs to an organ, in the same way as the bladder. He doesn’t see things any other way. His only goal has been to want to rebuild these women and their well-being“, had for her part questioned Me Maryse Pechevis, the midwife’s lawyer.
If Lionel Charvin had admitted during the trial to be “partly responsible“, he had disputed having “do something perverted or sexual“.
“It is the culmination of eight years of doubt and suffering.”
Very tested by the lawsuit, the victims of Lionel Charvin had expressed their relief to see him finally condemned. “It is the culmination of eight years of doubts and suffering. Afterwards, the pain doesn’t belong to me, it doesn’t matter. But we close the file and it’s a strange feeling“said Julia, one of the complainants. A feeling shared by Jennifer, another victim. “I always said that the day I was going to be recognized as a victim, I was going to have reparation. For the moment, I am not able to quantify it but I already feel a weight that has fallen“, she had explained.