The celebrity sex therapist praised by one of the world's leading feminists who had sex with dozens of clients - and is now accused of abusing one with his 'laser beam penis that burns up trauma'

There is a certain irony in the breathless effusiveness of the accolades once lavished upon investment banker-turned-sex therapist Michael Lousada.

Feminist author Naomi Wolf, who helped propel the orgasm guru into the spotlight when she featured him as an expert in her 2012 book Vagina, wrote of him thus: 'Mike Lousada is the world's nicest former investment banker turned male sexual healer.'

She went on, in colourful detail, to describe how Lousada had delivered her to a state of 'oceanic bliss' (not via intimate means) and 'sexually healed or sexually enhanced the response of hundreds of women through a combination of Tantric gaze and touch, and orgasmic 'yoni massage'; 'yoni' being the Sanskrit word for vagina, meaning 'sacred space'.

Another writer declared Lousada to be 'like Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer – without the horses'.

For his part, father-of-two Lousada, 57, proclaimed that not only could he reconnect clients with their 'own inner goddess', but he adhered to a strict code of ethics.

Quite how stringent he was in following his own ethical code is now the subject of some debate, for the one-time Sandhurst recruit (a short-lived foray), who went on from his encounter with Wolf to train in trauma therapy, has spent the past month locked in a High Court battle which, whatever the outcome, is likely to have left his reputation in tatters.

Mike Lousada was described as the 'world's nicest investment banker turned sexual healer'

Ella Janneh says that during a £750 therapy session Lousada 'sexually assaulted and raped' her

Ella Janneh, 37, is suing Lousada in a civil case, claiming that during a £750, three-hour 'therapy' session he 'sexually assaulted and raped' her, telling her his penis was 'like a laser beam' that could 'burn up trauma'.

The Australian-born woman's account of visiting Lousada — three times, four years apart — is harrowing.

A child sexual abuse survivor, Ella, who waived her right to anonymity, told the court she had gone to see Lousada after suffering panic attacks during consensual sex.

Two sessions in 2011 and 2012 had, she said, been 'non-sexual' and 'not threatening', but when she returned in 2016, shortly after returning to the UK from Australia, still desperate to conquer the crippling effects of panic attacks, it was a different matter.

In her witness statement submitted to court, she says: 'I had read websites about child sexual abuse survivors that had recommended body work as a new and developing modality to address abuse and residual trauma.

'I looked up Lousada and his website. He seemed to offer a multi-disciplinary approach and link together many different areas… the fact he was expensive made me think that he must have been a very good therapist.'

Ella's expectation, the court was told, was that 'body work' was similar to a physiotherapy session, coupled with talking therapy. But, despite the four-year interlude since her last appointment, the session in Lousada's North London home swiftly took an intimate turn.

Ella was, she claimed, taken into a regressed state and asked to talk 'as my child self', becoming dissociated as Lousada proceeded to touch her intimately, saying: 'You have a problem with penetration, so I think we should use my penis energetically to absorb the trauma. The head of the penis can act like a laser beam and burn up the trauma.'

Whether this was rape is a matter the court will decide in due time. But nonetheless, when you consider the Mail has since learned that the session, in August 2016, took place less than a month after his wedding to his third, and now ex, wife, Louise Mazanti, a very disquieting picture emerges of Lousada.

Lousada insists he repeatedly asked for and was given 'clear verbal consent' for his actions

Louise is one of several women to whom the Mail has spoken this week, all of whom describe Lousada as charming, yet with an arrogant, some say controlling, side to his character; all agree they felt boundaries in his professional and personal life were unclear.

Over the course of their five-year marriage Louise, a gentle and charismatic former academic, described how she came to a 'slow realisation' of the full extent of her husband's 'therapeutic' methods, and how she felt trapped by his 'manipulation' — the word she used in court.

'I consider myself an intelligent, emotionally mature woman and it still happened,' she told the Mail. Their divorce was finalised in 2022.

Regarding his sessions with Ella, Lousada admitted in court that he did ask 'the client' to imagine his penis burning away trauma, but insisted he repeatedly asked for and was given 'clear verbal consent' for his actions.

'There are things I would have done differently,' he said. 'After this session, I stopped this work because I recognised I didn't want to offer anything that could potentially be dangerous. I didn't want to expose anybody to anything that might be misunderstood.

'My intention was to support people with their healing. I think I have done some good, but I have made some mistakes.'

Ms Janneh claims he told her he 'wanted to use my penis energetically to absorb the trauma'

Indeed. But how did the man who once worked 18-hour days in the City swap sharp suits and Hermes ties for a sarong and the world of sexual healing?

He says the stress of life on the derivatives desk for a bank led him to start visiting relaxation retreats, which led to Reiki, then Tantric retreats and a realisation that when it came to sexual relations, he had a certain 'talent', namely that women could release 'pent-up grief or distress' while in his embrace.

As a former friend told me, Lousada said he went from being a 'banker to a w***er'.

A first marriage during which he had a daughter collapsed, a second, in which he had a son, also collapsed, as he forged his career in 'sexual healing', picking up qualifications as a counsellor, sex educator and certified sex coach along the way.

Very media friendly, he once appeared as a guest on This Morning and produced a YouTube sex guide for condom brand Durex. When Naomi Wolf visited for the first time in 2010, he joked: 'I suppose you could say I am a prostitute', before insisting that in fact his life's work was to heal women who had been sexually harmed.

The following year he set up, and briefly chaired, a professional governing body, the Association of Somatic and Integrative Sexologists (ASIS), an organisation which he declared on his website he was still a member of and whose code of ethics he was bound by when he met Ella.

As to penetrative sex with clients his response to that in interviews was often opaque. 'I don't generally have intercourse with my clients unless it is extremely therapeutic,' he said in 2010.

Two years later, he was quoted in a newspaper saying: 'I think the work I do is very potentially controversial... the whole topic of penetration is so fraught with complexity and multiple layers of meaning that it's just not somewhere I would go. What I'm not doing is having penetrative sex or oral sex with my clients. Those are my boundaries.'

This latter statement is somewhat surprising given what the High Court heard last month — that he worked with around 1,000 clients, with 30 to 40 engaging in 'penile penetration'. And that he struck up 'extra marital relations' with four former clients, outside of the treatment room.

Concerning, too, is the 'unboundaried' (his words) relationship that developed with a client two years before Ella, with whom he also admits not using a condom.

That woman gave evidence anonymously to the court as Witness BB, describing how she sought Lousada's help in 2014 on the back of Wolf's book, hoping he might be able to resolve the absence of sensation during sex.

In the following months a 'dysfunctional' relationship between client and therapist grew, during which she went from paying £450 a session to £50 a session as they became more and more like 'lovers hanging out', exchanging a barrage of messages and emails, seen by this newspaper, that are outside the bounds of what most people would expect of a therapeutic relationship.

BB spoke to the Mail this week and her account is deeply alarming. Then a Master's student studying psychology, now training to be a counsellor, she first became aware of Lousada after reading Wolf's book.

She knew he also offered 'yoni massage'. 'I was quite traditional,' she stresses with a wry laugh. 'This was pretty far out [for me].'

An introductory session revolved around talking and Lousada appeared empathetic when BB cried. It was in subsequent sessions the mood between the two changed; Lousada told the court there was 'mutual infatuation'.

BB tells me that while she was infatuated, there was something more exploitative at play. The second session involved yoni massage, which Lousada halted at BB's request. At the third session, things escalated further.

As she says: 'I was feeling particularly fragile and vulnerable that day and I was crying. Mike asked me what I needed, and I asked if he would kiss me. He said yes, and then things became quite heated, and we moved to having penetrative sex.'

What was perhaps more surprising was what happened next. 'We just lay in bed chatting and laughing like you would with your partner,' says BB.

Now she knows better. Then she thought that, in this strange new world which she had bravely entered, this was just part of Lousada's practice — 'that he was a professional who knew what he was doing'.

Subsequent sessions followed a similar pattern; there was never a condom. There was talk about therapy (Lousada agreed to help BB with her dissertation) but very little she could discern as such.

The whole messy relationship ended not long after BB arrived at Lousada's flat for a session, only for her to discover his wife there.

As she told the court: 'He told me his partner was conducting a therapy session on Skype in their bedroom. I felt uncomfortable with this and told him so, I was shocked he hadn't forewarned me.'

What followed, according to BB, was a hurried, upsetting sexual encounter that left her feeling 'disgusted with myself'.

'I felt used, like a toy, that I had been used for his pleasure as well as financial gain.'

It was a therapist — a traditional talking therapist this time — who helped ease her own feelings of guilt and reminded her that it is 'the therapist who is responsible for holding the boundaries'.

Even so, the pain of the whole torrid process was immense. 'He broke my trust, I didn't want to have any relationship for a very long time after that,' she says.

Sitting in a coffee shop in North London, Louise Mazanti described how she was both 'charmed and seduced' by her ex-husband. They'd met in 2011 while she was training to be a therapist (she's now a counsellor and stresses her talk-based work is nothing like that of her erstwhile husband) and there was an instant attraction, despite the fact she was married and he in a relationship.

Within six months, both now single, they embarked on a relationship, albeit one allowing each their 'sexual freedom'.

Louise tells me she knew her lover was offering tantric practice such as yoni massage, but gradually realised it was more.

She says: 'I felt uncomfortable with this side of his practice, but he told me he was helping to heal his clients through this work. He told me that I was viewing it like someone who was sexually repressed and that I was carrying my own sexual trauma.'

She reiterates what she told the court: '[We] were teaching and training one thing — a very careful, professional, boundaried approach to psychosexual therapy — and I felt that he was doing something different in his practice that did not align. It felt to me like he was sometimes still being a tantric sexual healer, wrapped in a therapeutic facade.'

Louise recalls how her husband told her in August 2016 he had engaged in penetrative sex with a client. Again.

Louise Mazanti, Mr Lousada's third wife, described how she was both 'charmed and seduced' by her ex-husband

Less than 24 hours later, police called and put Lousada on the phone — he had been arrested, accused of raping a client: Ella

Shocked, hurt, angry — not least because Lousada had, she insists, told her he had stopped having penetrative sex with clients — she was nevertheless persuaded by her husband's insistence that Ella had consented.

The marriage broke down irretrievably in 2021, a year after moving to the Greek island of Corfu to begin a new life together.

She says he cheated on her; he says they had already separated.

It matters little, for as Louise says: 'I realised I had no future with him, and I had to leave.'

A month after they separated, Louise discovered Ella had launched a crowdfunding page to bring a civil claim against Lousada. Ella had contacted a sexual assault service the day after the alleged attack and reported it to the police, but the CPS decided not to prosecute.

For Louise, it was like the final penny dropping. Her whole-hearted wish now is that Ella gets the 'healing, closure and justice' she needs.

As for Lousada, now living in Germany, his website still offers 'transformative therapy/coaching sessions' and 'bodywork' (clothed). What's more, via his Psychosexual Somatics Therapy website, he is currently promoting a new training course, starting in September.

He also offers graduates advanced training: the title of the course? 'Healing Trauma.'