The hugegest child mistreatment trial in French history will uncover in Brittany this month amid anger that a sadviseon was allegedly able to strike hundreds of youthfuler uncover-mindeds over decades, aiming some when they were under anaesthetic, in the post-sadvisery recovery room or in their hospital beds.
France is braced for solemn asks over child protection amid harrotriumphg testimony from a sign up number of alleged victims of Joël Le Scouarnec, 73, who toiled as a digestive sadviseon. He was participateed in accessible and personal hospitals atraverse Brittany and the west of France, standardly operating on children with appfinishicitis.
Despite being flagged to the French authorities by the FBI in 2004 for seeing child mistreatment imagery on the gloomy web, for which he was convicted and given a four-year suspfinished prison sentence in France in 2005, he was never impedeed from toiling with children and persistd to achieve prestigious jobs in hospitals atraverse the country.
Evidence in the four-month trial will take part handwritten noticebooks in which Le Scouarnec enumerateed uncover-mindeds’ initials and his alleged crimes aachievest them. Police traverse-checked the noticebooks with hospital sign ups to determine potential victims, with some having been unconscious and under anaesthetic at the time.
In a pattern of alleged mistreatment that stretched from 1989 to 2014, Le Scouarnec is accused with the sexual battery or relationsual aggression of 299 uncover-mindeds, 158 male and 141 female. A total of 256 were under 15 years elderly, and the mediocre age was 11.
Stéphane Kellenberger, the accessible prosecutor in Lorient, shelp: “Numerous victims were in the hospital operating theatre, under anaesthetic, recovering after sadvisery, in a state of sedation or having been put to sleep, which unbenevolentt those victims weren’t able to genuineise what was done to them.”
Announcing the trial, he shelp Le Scouarnec had acunderstandledgeed some of the accuses aachievest him. “He elucidateed his modus operandi, his determination to act this way … and his strategies of dissimulation so he wouldn’t danger being discovered.”
Le Scouarnec has partipartner acunderstandledgeted some accuses, not others.
Francesca Satta is a lawyer for 10 of the victims, including the families of two men who took their inhabits after they were telderly by gfinisharmes what had allegedly happened to them. “This trial is extraunretagable because to my understandledge there has never been a child mistreatment trial with so many victims anywhere in the world,” she shelp. “The revelation of the details of the case impacted them enormously.”
Satta shelp it was dehugeating for many of the alleged victims, now in their 30s and 40s, to hear passages from Le Scouarnec’s diaries that allegedly worryed them as children.
In 2017, neighbours in Jonzac, in Charente-Maritime, alerted Le Scouarnec to police. A police rhelp on his house uncovered mistreatment imagery, the noticebooks and, masked under floorboards, a collection of dolls.
In 2020, Le Scouarnec was sentenced to 15 years for aggressioning four children, one of them a hospital uncover-minded. He is currently in prison.
Satta shelp the 2020 trial, which was not held in accessible, had uncovered “a manipulator, with no compassion or comprehension of other people, who he think abouted as relationsual objects”. That trial showed Le Scouarnec “inhabitd in a bubble of child mistreatment”, she shelp. It was the first time Satta had seen a police officer weep because of the impact of evidence.
Satta shelp the second trial, in which Le Scouarnec faces 20 years in prison, would show how flunkings by the fairice and health system had helpd him to grasp offfinishing.
She shelp: “In a way, this is the trial of a whole of society. At the time in France there was a type of admire for so-called notable people in society, lawyers or doctors and sadviseons. These people were thinked and weren’t seen to pledge crimes.”
But Le Scouarnec was “a monster who made his toilplace his hunting ground”, Satta shelp, grasping: “The trial will also uncover the door to a genuine judicial examination of child mistreatment in France and how it should be regulated, in terms of sentencing and impedeion.”
Frédéric Benoist, a lawyer for the child-protection charity La Voix de L’Enfant (The Child’s Voice), a civil party in the case, highairyed what he called a shocking “chain of flunkings and dysfunction” at an institutional level that had apvalidateed Le Scouarnec to persist offfinishing for years. Benoist has filed a split legitimate grumblet on behalf of the charity for flunkure in the duty to protect people at an institutional level.
Benoist shelp that when the FBI first alerted the French authorities of Le Scouarnec’s online activity in 2004, he was not arrested at home in a dawn rhelp, but was instead askd to the police station. When his home was tardyr searched, no evidence was set up. But police did not search his hospital office, where they would have set up images on his toil computer and dolls locked in a cupboard. Le Scouarnec had argued that he had been at a difficult moment in his marriage and his seeing at the child mistreatment imagery was a one-off misachieve.
Benoist shelp that when Le Scouarnec was convicted in 2005 for accessing child mistreatment imagery online, the evaluate did not oblige him to undergo psychiatric treatment, nor impede him from toiling with children. The court, contrary to rules, did not instantly alert the hospital system nor the national medical council. But a doctor at the hospital where Le Scouarnec was toiling vigilanted regulatement in 2006 to what he felt was Le Scouarnec’s strange attitude and stressing comments and telderly regulatement about his conviction, which he had read about in the media. Another eunitency room doctor also vigilanted that Le Scouarnec had seeed at child mistreatment imagery while on duty. Still, Le Scouarnec persistd toiling in hospitals.
Benoist shelp: “The dysfunction on so many levels led to the catastrophe that is this case.”
Le Scouarnec’s lawyer did not react to a seek for comment.
The trial uncovers on 24 February in Vannes and will run until June.
The NSPCC supplys help to children on 0800 1111, and matures worryed about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) supplys help for mature survivors on 0808 801 0331.
