The Dr Guéniot Affair

The Dr Guéniot affair

See our video report on the Guéniot affair (November 2009) > ADSL 56k or on YouTube

CICNS’s overview of the affair, February 2009:

The court decisions

In June 2006, the Lille criminal court sentenced Dr Gérard Guéniot at first instance to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a permanent ban on practising medicine, for failure to assist a person in danger after the death, in 1997, of a cancer patient, Evelyne Marsaleix, who had been treated with homeopathy (AFP dispatch in L’Express). Dr Guéniot appealed against that decision. Dr Saint-Omer, a colleague of Gérard Guéniot, also tried in June 2006 on the same charge, was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison sentence. He did not appeal.

On 17 February 2009 (13 years after the facts, then, and following 10 years of judicial investigation) “The Douai Court of Appeal acquitted Dr Gérard Guéniot (62). (…) In the 87 pages of reasoning of the judgment, the Douai Court of Appeal explained yesterday that Dr Guéniot had examined the patient only once. And that, as a consequence, he could not be convicted of ‘failure to assist a person in peril’” (20mn).

The context of the affair

For once, we found in a newspaper, Nord Éclair, a fairly balanced account of the ins and outs of the affair together with, moreover, an acknowledgement of the media’s tendency to conflate. This kind of mea culpa, addressed to one’s own newspaper and on the subject of cults, is rare enough to deserve mention. We reproduce extensive extracts from the article by Raphaël Tassart (written before the court of appeal’s decision).

In 1996, “Evelyne Marsaleix, (…) originally from the Paris region, suddenly learns that she has breast cancer”. “[She] at first refuses to face a cruel fact: chemotherapy really is the only remedy. She looks for solutions, thinks of alternative medicines and, through one of her best friends, Catherine Ohl, ends up with the homeopathic doctor Saint-Omer in Tourcoing.”

“A year and a half later, Evelyne Marsaleix finds herself with a tumour that has more than doubled in volume. (…) A few more months and the young woman dies in conditions that were nothing short of atrocious. What happened in between? The young woman would explain it herself, just before dying. According to her, she was the victim of a trap laid by the members of a cult called the Grail, to which belonged — still according to her statements (…) — Dr Saint-Omer and finally Dr Gérard Guéniot, presented as the great guru of the community. These specialists allegedly promised her a cure. No heavy treatment, only plants: in short, the ideal remedy for a woman who at the outset wanted to hear nothing of chemotherapy. There was the ready-made trial for an affair of “druids in white coats”, as it would often be worded in the various press articles, including in Nord Eclair.”

”(…) Gérard Guéniot would see Evelyne Marsaleix only once — and that, according to him, to tell her to go back to see her oncologist, a certain Dr Coscas, with whom Gérard Guéniot was in fact used to working. The same finding appears in the investigation file.”

”(…) The homeopathic doctor Gérard Guéniot continues to drag behind him two diametrically opposed images and reputations. The first, the least commented on in the press, is that of a practitioner who was in his time — the 1990s — one of the most sought-after homeopaths in the country. The other, which destroys the first, would make him the guru of a movement esoteric to say the least, a druid in a white coat acting, in a secrecy broken a thousand times, on behalf of the Grail, an association at one time listed as a cult (cf. the 1996 parliamentary report, contested several times and today put away in a cupboard).”

”(…) The thesis of the accused Guéniot is to point to a kind of plot mounted by the victim, who was approached just before her death by the ADFI.”

”(…) the clichés attached to cults return. Each trial — or let us say judicial misstep — that Dr Guéniot goes through is followed by a rather considerable movement of support from his patients or former patients. (…) Seen from the ADFI’s side, the picture is clear (too clear?) and it is obvious: this is a cult with disciples who, indoctrinated, defend their guru.

Seen from the other side, it is the defence of an innocent man.”

In 20mn, Dr Guéniot’s defender, Maître Xavier Autain, explains that: “Gérard Guéniot had not opposed the young woman undergoing chemotherapy.”

The media coverage

The general media treatment of the affair was far from being as balanced, as the examples below illustrate.

As early as 1996, François Koch, the “anti-cult expert” of L’Express (to whom we have written several times), published an article entitled “Evelyne and the cancer charlatans”, an indictment of “the healers of the Grail” who “cry their innocence”. He ends his text with a quotation from Evelyne Marsaleix: “I was swindled for nearly a year, sighs Evelyne, stifling a sob. As long as I have a breath of life left, I will fight so that the Grail doctors stop winning followers… and victims”. To echo Evelyne Marsaleix’s suffering is one thing; to use it to push the crude theses of the anti-cult discourse is another. L’Express seems to have contented itself with publishing, more soberly, the AFP dispatch to announce Dr Guéniot’s acquittal.

This AFP dispatch, picked up by many other outlets, is entitled: “Death of a patient: acquittal on appeal for a doctor and former cult member”. If the doctor in question had been a former Catholic or Protestant, or a member of another religion “recognised” in France, would AFP have spoken of a doctor “former member of the Catholic or Reformed Church”? Raphaël Tassart, the Nord Eclair journalist, considers that the 1996 parliamentary report on cults was “put away in a cupboard”. Not only has it not been, but it is still very much a reference document for most media. If Dr Guéniot is still described by AFP as a “former cult member”, it is precisely because that report mentioned the Grail Movement in its list of cults and AFP refers back to it.

TF1 covered the subject twice in its programme “Droit de savoir” [“The Right to Know”] (a title that seems presumptuous indeed). A first programme in 1996 focused more particularly on the Grail Movement. The second programme, broadcast on 22 December 2007, is available on Google video (go to 34:40 for the Guéniot affair). It leaves no room for the other side of the argument: Dr Guéniot is guilty in the eyes of “journalists” who do not seem to trouble themselves with the rules of French law. Guilt or innocence are established only when the judgment is final, which was not the case in 2007, since the appeal proceedings were under way. In the 8 pm news of 26 February 2008, the date the appeal trial opened, the report repeats the same themes and arguments as in the “Droit de savoir” programme.

On 23 February 2008, Marianne published an article with an evocative title: “The trial of a guru in a white coat”. With irony, the journalist Elodie Vialle notes that: “the ex-doctor, who has appealed against his conviction, carries on his work”, doubtless unaware that the appeal procedure suspends the sentence of first instance. In a paragraph entitled “Megalomania”, Elodie Vialle continues: “Some have even formed a ‘support committee’ to defend Dr Guéniot. ‘These are people with well-filled wallets, useful idiots,’ judges Charline Delporte, head of the Association for the Defence of Families and the Individual (ADFI).” In a barely credible attempt to respect the adversarial principle, the journalist adds: “The president of the support committee, Françoise Lemaille, considers for her part that ‘the cult is only a pretext in this trial. In truth, what disturbs people is alternative medicine.’” Disqualifying the cult thesis is not to Elodie Vialle’s taste, and she worries in conclusion about seeing laïcité imperilled: “Gérard Guéniot is to be tried on appeal in Douai on Tuesday 26 February. Maître Xavier Autain, one of his lawyers, asks that ‘in the name of secular principles’ his client not be judged ‘according to his beliefs (…) but on the facts he is charged with’. As if the two were not intimately linked. At a time when the existence of the Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les dérives sectaires is under threat, when there is talk of ‘tidying up’ the 1905 law, when Nicolas Sarkozy’s chief of staff, Emmanuelle Mignon, explains that cults are ‘a non-problem’, there is no doubt he risks being heard.” (see the judgment of the Paris tribunal d’instance concerning this defamatory article, at the bottom of this page)

In Le Panorama du Médecin: “A mother had died in 1997 for having followed the illusory medical prescriptions of the two doctors, both linked to the Grail Movement, listed as a cult in the two parliamentary reports of 1995 and 1999”, an article reproduced on the UNADFI website under the title: “The new health charlatans”

FR3 sums up the outcome of the trial tersely: “This former member of the Grail Cult is thus cleared.”

Faced with the disregard for the adversarial principle in the traditional media, the people supporting Dr Guéniot chose to make their voices heard on the Net. They thereby allow anyone wishing to inform themselves more objectively to diversify their sources of information and build a better-informed opinion.

The role of the ADFIs and UNADFI

In 2005, Charline Delporte, President of the ADFI, has a well-informed opinion: “As an example of a so-called natural technique, of the kind found in abundance in new-age-type groups and in cults, that of Dr Guéniot, who was a member of the Grail Movement, is emblematic. In my opinion, he will have trouble with the courts, notably following the death of a patient. Dr Guéniot proved very dangerous, treating cancers with holly… A person died of it when she could have been saved and was curable, had she followed conventional medical treatment. This is one of the serious consequences of cult-type mental manipulation, which has nothing to do, as far as consequences go, with the small manipulations we are subjected to daily through advertising in particular.” (Source)

In 2006: “The inquiry had begun following a complaint by the Association for the Defence of Families and the Individual (ADFI). The anti-cult association denounced, among other things, certain medical theories, close to esotericism, defended by the two doctors, who identified with the Grail movement and its founder Abd-Ru-Shin, the ‘son of light’.” (CCMM)

In 2009: “In the Marsaleix case, UNADFI is a civil party. And the president of ADFI Nord, Charline Delporte, has been summoned to appear as a witness.” (UNADFI)

“The northern practitioner, a follower of parallel medicines, is accused by the victim’s family of having diverted her from conventional treatments. But the National Union of Associations for the Defence of Families and the Individual, Victims of Cults (UNADFI), insists on joining to the proceedings the practitioner’s membership of the Christian cult movement.” “‘In its 2006 judgment, the court did not recognise any role of the Grail in this affair,’ reacted François Jacquot, one of the doctor’s two lawyers. But in 2008, for the appeal proceedings, the Court agreed to hear UNADFI. (…) (Source)

The MIVILUDES

In its 2006 annual report (see our commentary on that report), the MIVILUDES devotes three pages (page 224) to the tragedy of Evelyne Marsaleix. The paragraph is entitled: “The Grail Movement”, and the introduction states: “One decision deserves to be flagged in the field of the fight against harm to persons and property committed by movements of a cult character: the case known as the ‘Grail Movement’ affair.” The rapporteurs present only the version of the facts argued by the civil party (namely the ADFI) and thus extend the accusation to the “Grail Movement”. They therefore arbitrarily conflate a possible individual dérive with the dérive of a group as a whole, with the undisguised aim of endorsing the “cult” character of the affair. Probably better informed of the rules of law than the journalists, they end their version of the facts with a sentence expressing caution: “This decision is not final, an appeal having been lodged” — but only after having taken care to cast an unequivocal suspicion of their own on Doctors Saint-Omer and Guéniot and the Grail Movement.

Justice at the Lille trial

Worth noting, in 2006, this sentence from the Prosecutor: “Against the ex-doctors, Mme Hoflack demanded an exemplary sentence in view of the extremely dangerous ideas that you spread.” (Source). This would thus be a prosecution case bearing not on established facts but on “ideas”.

“According to advocate-general Dominique Hoflack, the two men, specialists in homeopathy and acupuncture practising in the Lille metropolitan area, prescribed ‘a totally inappropriate treatment.’” (Source)

What followed

It must be noted, once again, that an ADFI (zealously seconded by the MIVILUDES and the media) fanned hatred and disinformation in an affair that was already very painful. Charline Delporte (head of ADFI Nord, civil party in the Dr Guéniot case) doubtless has her good conscience on her side, and we will not judge what she sincerely regards as a just and necessary fight. But that feeling of “rightness” can only crumble before the dérives of the anti-cult fight waged in France in the name of a perverted defence of the rights of the family and the individual. Following the court decision of the Douai Court of Appeal, Charline Delporte states: “I now appeal to the Chancellery. It is now up to it to bring this case before the Court of Cassation.” (20mn)

A few open questions

Will L’Express and François Koch comment on the court decision of the Douai Court of Appeal and their very slanted initial positions on the affair? Will TF1 launch a programme entitled “Droit de vraiment savoir” [“The Right to Really Know”], in which a more objective episode will be devoted to the Dr Guéniot affair? Will Marianne and Elodie Vialle now qualify their comments on “gurus in white coats” and absorb a little better the spirit of laïcité instead of invoking it like an incantation? Will AFP understand, after more than twenty years, that the 1996 list of cults never had any credibility and that it must stop referring to it directly or indirectly? Is the MIVILUDES, a public body supposed to represent a balanced version of social reality, legitimate in its one-sided, non-adversarial presentation of the Dr Guéniot affair and in the conflations it systematically makes? Does the ADFI, in view of its extreme — indeed extremist — positions and its instrumentalisation of the public authorities on the question of cult victims, deserve public-utility status?

If we can express only a measured hope of satisfactory answers to the first four questions, we have the answers to the last two: no and no.

Our commentary would have been similar even if Dr Guéniot had been convicted on appeal. It is indeed time to put an end to media lynching, to cheap outbursts. Many of those who refer emphatically to the rights of the person, the values of the Republic, laïcité, often trample them underfoot when they judge with partiality, and publicly, ahead of the judicial institution.

“They did not save my life”

The book by Antoine Guélaud, published in September 2009, added a further layer of ignominy to the treatment of this affair. Read our review of the scandalous work “They did not save my life”

By a judgment dated 21 October 2009, the Paris tribunal de grande instance convicted the publication director of the magazine Marianne for having published an article entitled “the trial of a guru” containing defamatory statements against Gérard Guéniot, who had been definitively acquitted by the Douai Court of Appeal in February 2009.

See also the interview with Dr Guéniot by Jean-Luc Martin-Lagardette