A fortune teller is said to have manipulated the mayor of a French coastal town for four years. Both are now in custody.
A scandal has shattered the idyll of the French coastal town of Agde, which is normally known for its picturesque sandy beaches and year-round sunshine. As the BBC reports, local fortune teller Sophia M. is said to have manipulated the mayor Gilles d’Ettore with supposedly psychic abilities, while he in turn is accused of misusing public funds.
Sophia M. is said to have claimed to be able to speak to the dead. Gilles d’Ettore, once an intelligence officer and police officer, sought her help to contact his deceased father. In the course of séances, Sophia M. is said to have manipulated the mayor for four years with her ability to ventriloquize. The entanglements led to legal investigations, and both parties are in custody, according to the BBC.
D’Ettore is accused of misusing public funds for the fortune teller’s luxury vacations, renovations to her home and the employment of her family members. The mayor’s lawyer told the BBC: “It’s unbelievable because we have a man in politics […] who is very intelligent. And you discover that a man like that can be manipulated by a woman.”
Sophia M.’s lawyer presents the case differently: “Other clients, including doctors and architects, said [Sophia] had mystical powers,” he told the BBC. “She told them details about their lives that no one else did knew.”
Meanwhile, both the mayor and the fortune teller remain in custody to prevent possible influence on witnesses. Sophia M. was placed in solitary confinement after an attack by fellow inmates who accused her of witchcraft.
However, this story is not the only one that sets Agde apart from other French coastal towns. As “Travel Tomorrow” reports, the city is considered the nudist capital of the world thanks to a nudist tourist center on Cap d’Agde. Life in the resort is lived entirely without clothing. However, public sexual activities often lead to tensions among the population.
Signs warning of penalties for outdoor sex acts are ubiquitous at the resort, but these measures appear to have little effect. According to Travel Tomorrow, nearly 1.5 million tourists visit Agde every year, attracted by the curiosity and promising reputation of the swingers scene. Because of its fame for open-air sex parties, one of the resort’s beaches is now known simply as the Bay of Pigs.
The naturist faction, on the other hand, sees its values at risk from the increase in libertine behavior. The escalation came to a head back in 2009, when several swingers clubs caught fire, an incident attributed to so-called “naturist terrorism.”
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