The vile life of France’s worst paedophile

This court sketch shows retired French surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec answering questions during his trial at the Criminal Court in Vannes on charges of assaulting or raping 299 patients. Photo / Benoit Peyrucq, AFP

A retired surgeon has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping or sexually assaulting 299 victims, almost all children, in France’s largest-ever paedophile trial.

Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, was found guilty of 111 rapes and 188 sexual assaults committed between 1989 and 2014 at a court in the seaside town of Vannes, southern Brittany. The average age of his victims was 11.

Le Scouarnec, dressed in black, stood as Aude Buresi, the presiding judge, handed the maximum 20 years that could be given on the charge of aggravated rape in France, where sentences are not added together on individual counts.

One prosecuting magistrate admitted the ruling might appear light compared to the US, where Le Scouarnec would risk “4111 years” behind bars.

Le Scouarnec will not be eligible for parole until two-thirds of the sentence is served.

“It was taken into account that the acts committed are of particular gravity due to the number of victims, their young age and the compulsive nature” of the crimes, the verdict read.

During the trial, a packed court heard in excruciating detail how Le Scouarnec carefully recorded each child rape in a succession of black notebooks, often preying on his vulnerable young patients while they were under anaesthetic or recovering from surgery.

It was also told of Le Scouarnec’s growing isolation and “descent into hell” – in the words of his lawyer – in the years before his arrest in 2017 after abusing a neighbour’s 6-year-old daughter.

The father of three lived alone in a filthy house, drinking two bottles of whisky a day, watching violent images of child rape online and strutting around in a tutu surrounded by a collection of lifelike child-sized sex dolls.

“I was emotionally attached to them ... They did what I wanted,” Le Scouarnec said in a quiet, detached voice.

During his last statements to the court, Le Scouarnec said: “I can no longer look at myself the same way because I am a paedophile and a child rapist.

“Many things have been said. I don’t necessarily remember everything now. It will no doubt come back to me when I’m in my cell, but what I’ve witnessed [in court] is the suffering for which I am responsible.”

Stephane Kellenberger, for the prosecution, told him: “You were the devil and he sometimes is dressed in a white coat.”

A month into the trial, Le Scouarnec admitted all the charges against him and asked for “no leniency”, only the right to “try to be a better person”.

Apparently sensitive to this request, the court rejected a rare demand from prosecutors that he should be held in a centre for treatment and supervision even after any release, citing his “desire to make amends” for what he had done.

But the decision caused outrage in court, with some shouting: “Shame on justice.”

Amelie Leveque-Merle, 42, who was sexually abused by Le Scouarnec when she was 9, said: “I feel like I’ve been fighting for six years for nothing.

“The fact that he will one day be able to walk down the street and see people again bothers me. We no longer have a normal life, and they are giving him back that right, and that revolts me.”

“The prosecutor had asked for something that suited everyone and today it’s extremely disappointing,” she said.

Solene Podevin Favre, the president of the association Face a l’inceste (Facing Incest), said: “I think the news was received with a great deal of shock.

“We don’t really believe in his wish to make amends. [He] showed repentance, but without any real emotion. You don’t really get the impression that it comes from the heart, but from the mind, perhaps to get a verdict that we might have expected to be less lenient from the court.”

While some victims expressed relief at the end of a horrific three-month process, simmering anger and frustration remained.

A litany of failings by hospitals, health authorities and politicians allowed France’s most “prolific” paedophile to go unchecked for nearly 30 years, prompting accusations of “white coat syndrome”.

There has also been disappointment that what was supposed to be a “trial of the century” has failed to gain the global attention of last year’s Pelicot case, in which Dominique Pelicot was jailed for recruiting strangers online to rape his wife.

Survivors of the surgeon’s abuse staged a protest outside the court in Vannes, holding signs such as “Never again” and “I accuse you”.

They also held signs representing 355 victims of Le Scouarnec. That number included “forgotten victims and those whose cases have been dismissed”, said Manon Lemoine, one of the victims.

She added: “We want to be together.”

Another victim, Celine Mahuteau, sent a letter to Emmanuel Macron, the French President, saying that France has not implemented a national policy “to prevent paedophilia”.

Louis-Marie, 35, a psychiatric nurse raped by Le Scouarnec at the age of nine when the surgeon treated him for appendicitis, said: “On the one hand, there’s relief that it’s over, because it’s been a plunge into horror. For three months, we’ve been living inside the perversion of this man.”

The nurse, who only wanted to be identified by his first name, had no memory of the crime until police rang him during the investigation. “I first of all thought it was a prank. I had blanked the entire thing out due to the trauma,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

Police knocked on the doors of scores of victims to inform them, out of the blue, that they’d been listed in the surgeon’s notebooks.

Some asked the police to stop reading about a childhood experience of which they had no memory. Others said it unleashed a mental earthquake.

“You’ve entered my head, it’s destroying me. I’ve become a different person – one I don’t recognise,” said a victim, addressing Le Scouarnec in court.

Some said it helped to explain mystery symptoms and triggers. “With my boyfriend, every time we have sex, I vomit,” one woman revealed in court.

Amelie Leveque-Merle, who was sexually abused by Le Scouarnec in 1991, said: “I had so many after-effects from my operation. But no one could explain why I had this irrational fear of hospitals.”

As the first victim to waive her anonymity, Leveque-Merle said she was inspired by Gisele Pelicot’s decision to appear publicly at her trial.

“We must get shame to change sides,” she said. “I hope this will encourage others to do the same, because we can see that victims tend to protect themselves, and therefore hide. And I think that, like Ms Pelicot, we should not be ashamed.”

Louis-Marie said the trial had helped heal the scars. “The fact that each victim was able to take the stand, for many of us, has had a great restorative purpose. For me, in any case, it really lifted a weight off my shoulders.”

But like many other victims, he has been furious at seeing a string of health professionals give evidence in the final stages of the trial, only to “pass the buck”.

Louis-Marie said: “There was only ever one guilty party, Le Scouarnec, but others bear responsibility. My goal was never for heads to roll, it was more for people to recognise a systemic dysfunction. Maybe I was naive.

“It’s as if everyone’s covering their tracks. It’s like everyone’s protecting themselves at the institutional level: ‘It’s not us, it’s them.’ There seems to be a desire to put a lid on it and move on.”

One doctor who’d tried to sound the alarm said: “I was advised not to talk about such-and-such a person.”

“There is a shortage of surgeons and those who show up are welcomed like the messiah,” explained a hospital director.

“I messed up, I admit it, like the whole hierarchy,” a different administrator finally conceded.

Le Scouarnec was flagged by the FBI in 2004 for accessing child abuse images online while he was working in Lorient, a city in Brittany. A year later, a French court handed him a suspended four-month sentence and a €90 fine.

Marika Mathieu, the author of an investigative book about the case, said: “The hearing lasted 40 minutes and the court didn’t even ask him what his profession was and whether he was in contact with children every day.”

By then, Le Scouarnec had already moved to a city 19km away in Quimperle, where he was welcomed as much-needed medical assistance.

Thierry Bonvalot, a psychiatrist who worked with Le Scouarnec, raised concerns in 2006 after learning of his conviction.

He wrote to the Order of Physicians, which regulates France’s medical profession, questioning Le Scouarnec’s ability “to remain completely calm when treating young children” in view of his “legal past”.

The Order summoned Le Scouarnec for a short meeting but took no action after he fobbed them off with “marital” problems.

“The council decided unanimously that possessing criminal child porn posed no professional problem,” said Mathieu.

“The hot potato then went through six or seven different services and nothing was done.”

A report questioning Le Scouarnec’s moral fitness to practise medicine reached the health ministry in 2007 and again, nothing was done.

Instead, the hospital promoted Le Scouarnec to head of surgery, with the director describing him as a “serious and competent” doctor with “excellent relations both with patients and their families, as well as with staff”.

Le Scouarnec continued working in Brittany before moving to Jonzac in southwestern France in 2008, where he remained until his retirement and then arrest in 2017.

Le Scouarnec was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2020 on charges of raping his 6-year-old neighbour, with the rape and sexual assault of two of his nieces when they were children in the 1980s and 90s, and a 4-year-old patient. But that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.

The case has reignited calls for reforms to France’s medical ethics codes, which critics have said discourage doctors from reporting abuse. Those who speak out risk legal consequences for violating professional “fraternity” rules.

Louis-Marie and some 50 other victims have formed a campaign group to pressure the French authorities into action. It has questioned why a parliamentary commission has not been set up, as in other high-profile abuse cases.

Many of them have asked, given the atrocious crimes, why does the whole world know the name of Pelicot but not Joel Le Scouarnec?

Frederic Benoist, a lawyer representing child protection advocacy group La Voix de L’Enfant (The Child’s Voice), said media coverage was perhaps less important because the ex-surgeon “admitted guilt on all counts after a few weeks”.

Others argued that there was no single victim such as Ms Pelicot in the Le Scouarnec case, which was deemed exemplary as defence lawyers were far more respectful to the plaintiffs.

For Myriam Guedj-Benayoun, a lawyer representing eight of Le Scouarnec’s victims, there lies another, darker reason: “We are in a state of societal denial about child abuse.”

Could the trial change that?

“There is hope, of course, but it’s slim given that no institution has come forward to admit responsibility. None,” she said. “No commission has been set up, even today. If we had a priest in front of us instead of a doctor, maybe it would be different.

“But when it comes to the medical profession, it’s ultra-protected and you mustn’t rock the boat.”

Yannick Neuder, the French Health Minister, pledged action after the verdict.

“Beyond this court ruling, we must take action, and I will work with the justice minister to ensure that this situation never happens again,” he told France Info.

“And that we never again find ourselves in a position where patients and vulnerable children, whether in local communities or elsewhere, are exposed to sexual predators.”