The scandal over the Italian gynaecologist dubbed Dr Magic Flute who had been sexually assaulting his patients claiming sex with him would cure cancer has widened after it was revealed other doctors knew what he was doing – yet none had reported it.

The Italian gynaecologist Dr Giovanni Miniello is now facing prosecution after he was caught in a hotel room with a pretty patient who he claimed he could cure by having sex with her.

But now it has emerged that he could have been exposed much sooner because when some of women he targeted reported him to other professionals in the medical sector, they were told: “Don’t tell me anything about Miniello, I know everything, you’re not the first.”

Dr Miniello at first resigned when he was caught in an undercover investigation wearing just his underpants in a hotel room but that has not stopped the investigation against him being expanded, leading to police finding out that a surprising number of medical professionals had known what he was doing.

One doctor is quoted in local media as saying: “I know Miniello well, because I have already received complaints from other patients about him.”

He reportedly told police that he had spoken to another doctor as well about the man, with both confirming that other patients had complained about the gynaecologist’s conduct.

But no report was ever filed against him with the Order of Doctors, according to its president Filippo Anelli, despite there being rumours about him in the Bari area. Anelli said: “What is emerging from the investigation was not imaginable and it is also significant that the affair involved some postgraduates.”

Miniello, 68, was in the end only caught by journalists from Italian TV show ‘Le Iene’ after a woman victim named only as Anna Maria complained that he had offered her his ‘sex cure’.

She said she had 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 said 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 investigative news programme Le Iene had 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 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 at the same time insisting that he had not committed any violence.

Police are currently interviewing other potential victims. The investigation is ongoing.