The Suicide of Doctor Jullien

The Suicide of Doctor Jullien

In March 2000, a doctor chose to end his life following a rumor (of the kind hundreds of people in France endure) turning on the multiple variations of the word “cult”. His relatives and acquaintances, the owner of the premises that housed his centre “Epinoïa” at the château of l’Isle-sur-Serein, other doctors, and drug addicts who had resided at the centre describe him as an exemplary man, devoted to his cause in a selfless way, discreet and modest, far from that image of “cult guru” which had been pinned on him.

The Epinoïa centre was a place open to drug addicts and psychotics who, following their stay there (according to the accounts of many patients) could return to society with greater autonomy.

The owner of the château, Mr Allen, declared: “Would I have tolerated a cult on my property? Besides, seeing Doctor Jullien’s humanitarian work, I no longer even wanted him to pay me rent, so modest were his means. Epinoïa, a cult? I rather believe that some people wanted to dislodge Doctor Jullien in order to acquire his premises.”

Could the cult rumor have been launched as a pretext for closing the Epinoïa centre, as has been done since the beginnings of the anti-cult campaign in France?

According to the security specialist: “The centre was reclassified into a higher category in order to force it into unnecessary works, given that it is a residential home and not a medical centre. The patients were sent by the psychiatric hospital, to which they went every month for their medical follow-up. They lived in individual rooms on the ground floor, opening directly onto the outside. As for the commission of inquiry, I was stunned to see that senior officials of the department’s security services had been brought in. And they themselves were embarrassed to be there. These are professionals who would not even have been troubled for a security inspection at the Opéra Bastille! I affirm that Doctor Jullien was the target of unjustified harassment in view of the safety standards that apply to a non-medicalised establishment receiving able-bodied people, free to come and go. I never saw anything like it in my thirty years of professional experience.”

After two years, the mayor decided to close the centre, before Doctor Jullien had even been able to begin the required works. Yves Jullien took his own life on 6 March 2000.