Twenty-year term sought for French surgeon in mass sex abuse trial

Twenty-year term sought for French surgeon in mass sex abuse trial

Joel Le Scouarnec admitted during the trial to sexually abusing all 299 victims

A French prosecutor on Friday requested the maximum 20-year sentence for a former surgeon who admitted to sexually abusing almost 300 patients, mostly children.

An additional trial will also likely be required for Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, to cover the cases of further victims whose abuse is not part of the current case, said prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger.

Le Scouarnec has been on trial since February accused of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults on 299 people, mostly of minors under 15, at a dozen hospitals in western France, in one of the country's largest child sex abuse cases.

He admitted in March to sexually abusing all 299 victims between 1989 and 2014, many while they were under anaesthesia or waking up after operations.

Le Scouarnec, who is already in prison for a previous conviction for child sex abuse, should receive the maximum possible term of 20 years in jail on the single charge of aggravated rape, said Kellenberger.

Warning of the "high risk of re-offending" in the case of Le Scouarnec, Kellenberger said the defendant should serve at least two-thirds of his term in jail before being allowed any chance of parole.

Even once released, he should be placed in a centre for treatment and supervision, a special but rarely used measure allowed under French law, the prosecutor added, pointing to the accused's "serious personality disorders and the danger posed by these disorders".

The prosecutor also requested a range of additional measures, including some that are relatively unusual.

Le Scouarnec must no longer have the right to work with minors, but also never own an animal, due to his zoophilia, said the prosecutor. 

He should also be banned from staying in the Brittany, Loire, Normandy and Paris regions to prevent any chance "the victims of terror" cross paths with the surgeon again, the prosecutor said.

"You were the devil and he sometimes is dressed in a white coat," the prosecutor told Le Scouarnec.

The verdict is expected Wednesday.

- Other victims 'not forgotten' -

The months of hearings have been marked by horror over the acts of the ex-surgeon -- who confessed to the abuse -- but also frustration over the failure of medical and judicial authorities to act sooner.

Kellenberger said that "in a case of this magnitude", spanning from 1989 to 2014 and across multiple areas in France, the judicial authorities have not identified every one of the victims, at least within the time limits set for this trial.

But "these victims have not been forgotten" and "further investigations are under way and could lead to a trial," he said.

"There will probably be another Le Scouarnec procedure," he told the court.

The former surgeon practised for decades until his retirement in 2017, despite a 2005 conviction for owning sexually abusive images of children.

Directly addressing the question of why the surgeon was allowed to carry on practising, the prosecutor asked: "Should Joel Le Scouarnec have been alone in the dock?"

"It could have been done better, could have been done differently, even with the well-known complexities of French bureaucracy, with everyone happily passing it on until it's lost and hurts innocent people," he said.

- 'Utterly guilty' -

The former surgeon told the court on Tuesday he also felt "responsible" for the deaths of two of the victims -- Mathis Vinet, who died after an overdose in 2021 in what his family says was suicide, and another man who was found dead in 2020.

The former doctor is already in prison after being sentenced in December 2020 to 15 years for raping and sexually assaulting four children, including two of his nieces.

In France, sentences are not added together, unlike in the United States where Le Scouarnec would have been jailed for "two thousand years", said the prosecutor.

"Nothing ever held back Joel Le Scouarnec, only his imprisonment," he added.

One of the surgeon's lawyers, Maxime Tessier, said his client was "utterly guilty".

While the surgeon admitted responsibility, he also repeatedly said he did not remember his acts.

Some parties in the trial voiced frustration that it had not had the impact in France they hoped for. The case has not won the level of attention given to that of Dominique Pelicot, who was jailed last year for recruiting dozens of strangers to rape his now ex-wife Gisele.

Many victims' lawyers also questioned the sincerity of Le Scouarnec's apologies, which he repeated almost mechanically over the weeks of the trial, sometimes word for word.

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