Tried in Riom for three days, Michel Boudon, the Auvergne “peasant-healer”, was sentenced Friday to twelve years in prison by the Puy-de-Dôme criminal court for three rapes and nine sexual assaults on men who came to consult him from 2015 to 2021. The court also issued a definitive ban on exercising the activity of bonesetter or magnetizer. The sentence is lower than the requests of Attorney General Fabienne Cancelier who had requested sixteen years in prison “taking into account the seriousness of the facts”, “the number of victims” and “the personality of the accused”.
This 72-year-old man, who had acquired a certain notoriety after being the subject of several television reports, received hundreds of people at his farm in Saint-Jean-des-Ollières (Puy-de-Dôme) who came to consult him for, among other things, pain, skin problems or depression. During the hearing, he admitted to having performed masturbation or fellatio – considered rape since 2018 – on some of his visitors, but he minimized the scope of his actions by affirming that it was a matter of “calming down the nerves.”
The “healer” “used his profession to satisfy a fantasy”, according to a psychologist
Friday morning, the court looked into the personality of the accused, who has always lived on the family farm and claims to have never had romantic or sexual relations.
An expert psychiatrist said he had not noted “any alteration or abolition of discernment”, nor any psychiatric pathology, but detected “perverse personality traits”. Michel Boudon “takes refuge behind care” and “the other is not found in his speech”, continued the psychiatrist, who also underlined the “narcissistic side” of the accused when he talks about his “gift” of healer. A psychologist testified to his “relational and emotional coldness”. According to her, he “used his job to satisfy a fantasy with people who were vulnerable because they were in need, in pain”.
“You are a rapist”
During the hearing, the men who were able to be heard expressed their “surprise”, their “stunnedness” and their lack of reaction to the one in whom they “trusted”. They also recounted their traumas, their “shame” after the events. “They had come to seek care, they only found the traumatic perversity of a cold man,” pleaded Maître Yann Fauconnier, lawyer for two plaintiffs.
“You are not the Auvergne of Brassens, you are not the peasant healer […], you are a rapist, and you have done more harm than good,” said Mr. Pierre-Emmanuel Girard, another lawyer for the civil parties, to the accused. “What is unthinkable is to hide behind these therapeutic practices,” underlined Me Elodie Dardat, lawyer for another man.
“I ask you to consider him because he tells you the truth” and “he believes in what he says”, pleaded for his part his lawyer Me Patrick Roesch. Earlier on the stand, Michel Boudon’s adopted son, who met him at the age of eight, described him as “nice”, “naive”, “simple”, “not really knowing how to defend himself “. “He doesn’t know what it’s like to do harm, he wanted to help people,” he assured.
The accused maintained “want to do good”
At the end of these three days of grueling trials, the attorney general Fabienne Cancelier described “an individual who took advantage of his alleged gift to satisfy his desires, his impulses towards men, which he did not will never admit.” “Obviously the acts accused of Mr. Boudon are voluntary” and the accused “hides behind false arguments, false truths concerning the anatomy of the human body to make people accept the unacceptable,” said the general advocate. .
She insisted on the particular vulnerability of four victims, linked to their physical or mental state. One of them, who has since died, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Another had multiple disabilities.
Often appearing detached, the accused with white hair and an emaciated face, who sometimes has difficulty hearing, maintained that he “wanted to do good”, while admitting the “seriousness” of his actions. “I apologize to some if I hurt them morally,” he finally said before asking for “forgiveness”.