A French court has handed down its verdict in one of the most shocking cases yet! Former French surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, now 74, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing hundreds of patients, many of them under the age of 15. His conviction also brought to an end the largest child abuse trial in French history.
Joël Le Scouarnec worked as a gastrointestinal surgeon in public and private hospitals in western France. During his career, he often operated on children suffering from appendicitis.
During the three-month trial in Vannes, he was accused of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults between 1989 and 2014 in various hospitals. Many of the children he abused were under anesthesia or had just woken up from operations. Some were abused in their hospital beds. The average age of the victims was 11 years old.
Le Scouarnec finally admitted all charges in court, saying in his final statement:
"I am not asking for mercy from the court."
During the trial he said: "I was a surgeon who took advantage of my status to attack children, I don't deny that."
Psychological assessments showed that he continues to be extremely dangerous.
Le Scouarnec's own lawyer, Maxime Tessier, told the court: "He is completely guilty."
Tessier added that the medical world and French politicians should learn lessons from the "major failure of the health system," which did not stop Le Scouarnec during decades of abuse.
Le Scouarnec was reported to French authorities by the FBI in 2004 after seeing images of child abuse on the dark web. In 2005, he was convicted in a French court of possession of child abuse materials and given a four-year suspended sentence, but the court did not order him to stop working with children.
He continued to hold prestigious positions in hospitals across France until his retirement in 2017 and systematically abused children undergoing the operations he performed.
Victims' groups and child rights activists said the trial exposed serious failings by the state and officials. They demanded a full government review of how the surgeon was able to continue working and abusing for so long. The 20-year sentence is the maximum Le Scouarnec could receive for aggravated rape. In France, sentences do not stack, unlike in the United States, where Le Scouarnec would have been sentenced to 2,000 years in prison, according to state prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger.
Le Scouarnec is already in prison after being sentenced in December 2020 to 15 years for rape and sexual abuse of four children. Kellenberger said another trial is expected as the prosecutor's office opened an investigation to find more victims not involved in the current case.
“You were the devil, and sometimes the devil wears a white coat,” Kellenberger told the former surgeon.
His 2005 conviction was not automatically reported to the hospitals where he worked. He was hired by several regional hospitals that depended on his expertise to stay open.
In one case, Le Scouarnec told Michèle Cals, the former director of the Jonzac hospital in western France, about his 2005 conviction, saying he had only seen child abuse images because he was separated from his wife. Cals received no warning about not being hired, so he resumed his activity. “We needed surgeons,” she told the court.
Cals said her 2005 conviction did not prevent her from being around minors. She admitted that she "didn't do enough research" and called it a "failure" on her part and that of her superiors.
Joël Belloc, head of the Order of Physicians in Charente-Maritime, where Le Scouarnec finished his career, was asked if he could have acted differently. He said: “With a clear mind, it is clear that he would have.” He added that “perceptions were different” at the time.
About 20 Le Scouarnec victims and their relatives protested outside the courthouse earlier this month over what they called “the silence of the political world.” They called for the establishment of a government commission to address the lessons of the Le Scouarnec case and prevent a repeat of such events. The group said: “We are shocked that the trial of the century is not being seen as a turning point by the government and the general public.”
Manon Lemoine, now 36, one of the victims Le Scouarnec admitted to raping when she was 11, said: "They are trying to present him as a monster, but this is the monster that society created and allowed to continue on its path."
