Italian psychiatrist convicted of patient rape

April 13, 2011

On March 26, 2011, psychiatrist Diego Chianese of Merate, Italy, was given a 64-month conditional sentence for sexual violence (rape) with aggravating circumstances. 

Chianese, who was employed at Mandic Hospital, was convicted of engaging in a sexual relationship with a vulnerable 35-year-old female patient who had come to him for treatment for depression. 

Chianese never denied the relationship but argued that it was consensual and that the patient only filed the complaint against him when he refused to leave his wife for her.  However, the district attorney showed that the patient was in a condition of vulnerability which would have precluded her ability to give consent and would have enabled Chianese to exploit that psychological vulnerability for sex. 

A conditional sentence does not include jail but provides for the condition that if he should commit a similar crime during the term of the sentence, he would have to serve the prison time for the first offense as well as any incarceration resulting from the second charge. 

Chianese was additionally suspended for one year from private practice and banned for life from working in public hospitals and was also required to deposit 30,000 Euros ($40,000 USD) as a precautional deposit pending the outcome of a civil lawsuit against him.

Source: Laura Achler, “Five years sentence for the psychiatrist who abused his patient,” La Gazzetta di Lecco, March 26, 2011.