By Victoria Bisset and Annabelle Timsit
Warning: This story contains graphic content
A French court has sentenced a former surgeon to 20 years in prison after finding him guilty of the rape and sexual assault of hundreds of people – mostly children, and many under anesthesia – during his decades-long career.
The trial of Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, which began in February, is believed to be the country’s largest child abuse case.
A courtroom sketch of Joel Le Scouarnec, who is already in prison for other sexual offences.Credit: AP
During the trial in Vannes in north-western France, Le Scouarnec confessed to raping and sexually assaulting 299 people between 1989 and 2014, the Associated Press and French media reported.
Most of the victims were minors; their average age at the time of the alleged crimes was 11.
The sentence is the maximum penalty available. Le Scouarnec is already serving a 15-year prison sentence in a separate case, in which he was found guilty in 2020 on four counts of rape and sexual assault against a six-year-old neighbour, a patient and two of his nieces.
In France, sentences are served simultaneously, not added together. He was also sentenced to a two-thirds minimum sentence, so he cannot request an adjustment before early May 2030, said Giovanni Bertho-Briand, a lawyer in the case.
With potential sentence reductions for good behaviour, he can hope to be released between early August 2030 and December 2033, Bertho-Briand added.
The court did not uphold the prosecution’s request to send Le Scouarnec to a supervised facility for an indefinite period after he serves his prison time, a very rare measure for convicted dangerous offenders in France.
A protest for Le Scouarnec’s victims was held outside the court ahead of the verdict.Credit: AP
Bertho-Briand said his client, one of the alleged victims, was disappointed the measure was not taken.
“She understands that in France the number of victims has no influence on the years of prison, but she considers that he will still be dangerous in a few years,” he said.
Le Scouarnec also admitted responsibility for the deaths of two alleged victims in recent years, including one who died of an overdose and another who took his own life.
“They’re dead; I’m responsible,” French news channel BFM TV quoted Le Scouarnec as saying. “They are no longer here because of me.” During the trial, he also confessed to abusing his granddaughter when she was a young child, according to BFM TV.
Prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger described Le Scouarnec as “the devil”.
“I am not asking the court for leniency,” Le Scouarnec told the court on Monday, according to French media. “Simply grant me the right to become a better person and to regain that part of humanity that I have so lacked.”
Le Scouarnec was arrested in 2017 after the six-year-old daughter of Le Scouarnec’s neighbour told her parents that he had touched her inappropriately. Police searched his home and found notes detailing his abuse of patients, including in the operating theatre or their hospital rooms.
A key question of this trial is how the former surgeon was able to continue the abuse for so long, despite previous flags of his behaviour. In 2004, the FBI shared a list of clients of a child abuse website with French authorities, on which Le Scouarnec’s name appeared.
‘We want to say never again’
Hugo Lemonier, a French journalist who wrote a book about Le Scouarnec, told The Washington Post ahead of the trial that Le Scouarnec confessed at the time to having accessed images of child abuse, but police did not find any at his home or look into his relationship with young patients or relatives.
Le Scouarnec was convicted of possession of images of child abuse and given a suspended sentence, but returned to work at a hospital in north-west France, where the abuse allegedly continued.
“We want to say ‘never again’,” French Health Minister Yannick Neuder told radio network Franceinfo, ahead of the verdict. “We must act, and I will act with the justice minister so that this situation doesn’t happen again,” he added.
The trial came as France undergoes a reckoning over its relationship with sexual crimes after the trial of Dominique Pelicot, who was sentenced in December to 20 years after being found guilty of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, and orchestrating her abuse by dozens of other men.