Prosecutors have ordered the arrest of the Italian gynaecologist dubbed Dr Magic Flute who was caught in a hotel room with a pretty patient who he claimed he could cure by having sex with her.

Dr Giovanni Miniello at first resigned when he was caught in an undercover investigation wearing just his underpants in a hotel room with a woman patient who he was about to ‘cure’ of cancer by having sex with her.

Miniello, 68, was exposed by journalists from Italian TV show ‘Le Iene’ after a woman victim complained that he had offered her his ‘sex cure’.

The woman said she decided to speak out to the journalists because his next victim might be someone desperate for a cure for real cancer, or maybe a teenage girl that he would take advantage of.

She had consulted with him about failing to get pregnant, and he allegedly suggested that she had indications of human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually-transmitted DNA virus that can cause cancer, despite a negative Pap smear test.

He reportedly said: “I have saved many women from cancer. All those I have had contact with were negative afterwards.”

The doctor practised at a surgery in the southern Italian city of Bari, the capital of the Apulia region on the Adriatic coast, and after the undercover investigation was broadcast, 15 other women came forward claiming they were also victims of the doctor and his miracle sex cure.

The 33-year-old woman victim who started the investigation by contacting the reporters was identified as Anna Maria, and she had also complained that after the examination, when she was getting dressed, he had touched her breasts without any explanation, and told her he liked women with small breasts.

When she then contacted him for the results of the test, she was shocked when he proposed that she could be cured by having sex with him and offered her an appointment – in a seedy hotel room.

But the woman, who had taken advice from other medical experts because she was suspicious of the doctor, recorded the conversation, and she then contacted the investigative news programme Le Iene.

They hired an actress to visit the specialist, where he quickly repeated the same strategy that he had used with Anna Maria and told her that she had “white spots” on her cervix, which indicated the presence of the human papillomavirus. He then offered the same treatment that he had offered Anna Maria, which involved them having sex which would give her immunity.

The undercover actress agreed to meet him in a hotel, where he again assured her as he undressed that afterwards she would be free from the virus.

While there, when she asked about protection, he told her that it was pointless, as she would not then get the benefit of the antibodies if he had latex on.

Before the act was carried out, however, a journalist came into the room and surprised the half-naked doctor who protested: “I’m doing this for my studies, and for the other people that I have saved.”

Giovanni Miniello is quoted in local media as having said through his lawyer: “I, who have successfully treated hundreds of women for over 40 years… only proposed an alternative treatment that has yielded results”.

He also added that he had never coerced the women to have sex with him and always gave them “absolute freedom of choice”.

The coordinator for the Anti-Violence Centre in Bari, Marika Massara, said: “We have received several reports in the last few days, dozens. Women who have come together and gone through a similar situation. Some consider reporting it, others are afraid, also because the level of secondary victimisation we are witnessing is very high.”

The public prosecutor in Bari opened an investigation and the doctor has now been arrested and placed under house arrest. The arrest request was signed by prosecutor Roberto Rossi, and the allegations are of aggravated sexual violence against two patients to whom the doctor allegedly offered sexual intercourse as a cure for the papilloma virus.

The two incidents of violence the Bari gynecologist is being investigated over allegedly took place in September 2019 and in June 2021, and both were reported by the alleged victims a few months later, according to local media.

Due to the accusations, Giovanni Miniello had already resigned from the Order of Doctors and also asked for the cancellation from the Register despite insisting that he had not committed any violence.

But for the judge investigating the allegations, “during the visits and health checks [the two plaintiffs] had undergone at his private practice, he had put in place acts and conduct that was seriously damaging to their sphere and sexual freedom, moreover in the absence of any notice to patients about certain ‘invasive’ practices to which they would have been subjected and therefore without having ascertained their relative consent.”

For the judge, this was “conduct completely unrelated to the medical investigation activity, carried out in a context characterized by the use of sentences and statements with an explicit sexual content.”

The investigation is ongoing.