Quebec woman was ‘cooked to death’ at retreat, coroner says
Quebec police officers have completed their report into the bizarre death of Chantale Lavigne — who was “cooked to death” at a personal development seminar — and investigators are expected to meet with the Quebec prosecutor assigned to the case as early as next week.
It will be up to the prosecutor “to decide whether any charges will be filed, and, if so, what they would be,” Rene Verret, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, said Thursday.
Lavigne died in hospital after she and eight others in a personal-development seminar called Dying in Consciousness were covered with mud, wrapped in plastic, put under blankets and immobilized with their heads in cardboard boxes for about nine hours, under instructions to hyperventilate.
Lavigne was removed, unconscious and with a body temperature of 40.5 C, from the Ferme Reine de la Paix in the Drummondville, Que., area after a 911 call that Radio-Canada said had been made by Gabrielle Frechette, a self-styled therapist who was the seminar’s operator. (Photo: Postmedia News files)
a spiritual way to commit suicide? why weren’t charges laid, what’s there to debate?!
