Former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec was handed a 20-year sentence on Wednesday, after being found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting 299 children, over a 25-year period which spanned from 1989 to 2014.
Judges followed the public prosecutor’s recommendations, sentencing Le Scouarnec to France’s maximum jail term for aggravated rape after a three-month trial.
Most of Le Scouarnec’s victims were unconscious or sedated hospital patients when the crimes occurred. The 74 year old’s victim include 158 boys and 141 girls, aged on average 11 years at the time of the crimes.
The criminal court of Morbihan in Brittany, ordered the former surgeon serve at least two-thirds of his sentence, before being eligible for release on parole.
Le Scouarnec is already serving a 15-year prison sentence for a conviction he was handed in 2020 for the rape and sexual assault of four children, including two nieces.
In French law, sentences run concurrently and Le Scouarnec should only serve the additional years after the first sentence is completed.
Despite handing Le Scouarnec the maximum sentence, the court rejected a request from prosecutors calling for the application of a specific provision of French criminal law, which is designed to ensure that criminals who have served their sentence but are likely to reoffend be placed in supervised centres upon their release.
However, the court rejected this request, citing Le Scouarnec’s “desire to make amends.”
For many of Le Scouarnec’s victims and their lawyers this decision was a major blow.
“Psychiatric assessments of Le Scouarnec raised concerns regarding the risk he could repeat similar crimes, so I am baffled by this decision”, Gwendoline Tenier, a lawyer who represented one of the former surgeon’s victims told Euronews.
Le Scouarnec was first convicted in 2005 for possession of child pornography and was handed a four-month suspended prison sentence and a €90 fine.
At the time, no measures were taken to suspend his medical license or limit his contact with children, and Le Scouarnec continued his abuse in hospitals until his arrest in 2017.
Many victims are disappointed by trial
A number of Le Scouarnec’s victims and their lawyers have complained about a perceived lack of attention from the media over the course of the trial.
“Media coverage of the trial has been extremely disappointing and has fallen short of showing the level of the violent crimes which were carried out”, Maëlle Noir, an activist for the feminist NGO Nous Toutes told Euronews.
“We can’t help but compare the media coverage for this case with the trial of Dominique Pelicot, in which Gisèle’s was portrayed as a sort of iconic figure. This could not happen in this trial because of the sheer amount of victims”, added Noir.
For others, the media is to blame, but also the public’s inability to process the nature of the crimes.
“Such sordid, repulsive acts committed against children go beyond the intellectual and processing abilities of many individuals. This is very problematic as it causes many people to turn away from these issues”, Tenier told Euronews.
Tenier’s client was summoned in 2019 by police investigators for a hearing which would change her life.
“She discovered that Le Scouarnec had raped her when she was 11, while being treated for appendicitis in hospital,” said Tenier.
The alleged incident happened in 2001 in a hospital in Brittany where Annabelle’s mother worked as a care assistant and Le Scouarnec had been practising for years.
Institutional oversight protected Le Scouarnec
According to several victims and human rights NGOs, France’s health and judicial authorities are also partly to blame for the scale of the abuse Le Scouarnec was able to carry out.
In mid-May, a group of 50 victims sent a letter to France’s Ministries of Health and Justice, as well as to the country’s High Commissioner for Children, in which they called on the authorities to establish an inter-ministerial commission following the trial.
Meanwhile, the child protection charity “La Voix De l’Enfant” has condemned the lack of investigations into Le Scouarnec from health authorities or other related bodies, despite the fact he was handed a four-month suspended prison sentence in 2005 for possessing images of child pornography.
The culmination of a seven-year investigation
The trial is the culmination of a seven-year investigation, which began when a six-year-old neighbour told her parents that Le Scouarnec had touched her over the fence which separated their properties.
Police searched Le Scouarnec’s home and discovering his diaries in which he is alleged to have meticulously catalogued the instances of rape and abuse, alongside the victims’ names.
In one entry, he allegedly wrote: “I am a paedophile and I always will be.”
Not all victims were initially aware they had been abused. Some were contacted by investigators after their names appeared in journals kept by Le Scouarnec, in which he meticulously documented his crimes.
Others only realised they had been hospitalised at the time after checking medical records. Two of his victims took their own lives some years before the trial.
Using the cover of medical procedures, the former surgeon took advantage of moments when children were alone in their hospital rooms.
His method was to disguise sexual abuse as clinical care, targeting young patients who were unlikely to remember the encounters.
Le Scouarnec’s trial comes as campaigners across France have been attempting to lift the taboo which has long surrounded sexual abuse, months after the Gisèle Pelicot case drew to a close.
Pelicot was drugged and raped by her ex-husband and dozens of other men over a nine-year period. The men involved were handed sentences ranging from three to 20 years.
In a separate case focusing on alleged abuse at a Catholic school, an inquiry commission of the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, is investigating allegations of physical and sexual abuse over five decades.
