France’s largest-ever child sex abuse: The horror story of a surgeon who will go on trial for sexually abusing 299 over 25 years

Today (February 24) marks a watershed moment in France. It’s the day that the European nation will begin its largest-ever child sex abuse trial, a case that activists hope will shatter taboos and empower other victims to come forward.

At the centre of it, is 74-year-old Dr Joël Le Scouarnec, who is being tried on charges of raping and sexually assaulting 299 people over 25 years — almost all his victims were children — while they were under anaesthetic or recovering from operations.

This case comes just two months after the verdict in the widely publicised case of Gisele Pelicot — in which dozens of men, including her husband, were convicted of raping her.

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As France braces for this moment, we explain what the case is all about — from the accused, the many victims and the horrors they experienced.

Who is Dr Joel Le Scouarnec?

At the heart of this case is Joel Le Scouarnec , 74, a once-respected surgeon, who worked in France’s Brittany.

Born in Paris, he qualified as a surgeon at a medical faculty in Nantes in 1983. Years later, in 1994, he was hired by the private Sacré-Coeur clinic at Vannes in Brittany. For 10 years, the surgeon, specialising in digestive surgery, worked at a dozen hospitals across the west of France. In 2004, he moved to the public hospital at Lorient and then Quimperlé.

It was in 2017 that Le Scouarnec caught the attention of French authorities after his six-year-old neighbour in Jonzac, southwestern France, told her mother that Le Scouarnec, who she described as “the man with a crown of white hair” had exposed himself and sexually touched her through a broken garden fence.

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When authorities began probing that crime, they uncovered a horror that they were not ready for. They found multiple hard drives containing more than 300,000 photos and videos featuring child sexual abuse under a mattress, as well as notebooks recording details of the alleged abuse of child patients. Officers also discovered a collection of dolls, some life-sized, under the floorboards.

One of the posts in his notebook read, “I am a paedophile and I always will be.”

Ultimately, in 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the rape and sexual assault of four children, including two nieces and a young patient.

But that wasn’t the end; investigations uncovered a litany of child abuse, dating as far back as 1985. Now, the trial that will begin will deal with cases from 1989 to 2014 on 158 men and 141 women who were age 11 on average at the time.

Who are Le Scouarnec’s victims?

Now, accused to be the most prolific child abuser to face justice in France, and possibly Europe, Le Scouarnec’s abuse came under the guise of medical examinations. According to investigating documents, the doctor sexually abused both boys and girls when they were alone in their hospital rooms. Some of his abuse also occurred while his victim was under anaesthesia, reveal the documents.

For instance, there’s the case of Marie (name changed). Now in her late thirties, she was just 10 years old when she was hospitalised suffering from acute appendicitis. Joel Le Scouarnec was her surgeon. In his diaries, he wrote about abusing her while she was under anaesthesia.

Shockingly, Marie didn’t know she was Le Scouarnec’s victim until French police approached her in 2019. Speaking to The Guardian, she recounted how the authorities showed her Scouarnec’s records. “There was my family name, my first name, age, the address of my parents, everything he did and how he felt. It was disgusting. The word ‘raped’ was hard enough, but here were these obscene phrases of what happened.”

And Marie isn’t alone. Forty-two-year-old Amélie Lévêque reached out to investigators in 2019 when she saw a report about a surgeon under investigation on suspicion of sexually assaulting patients.

“Right away, I said to myself: ‘That’s it, that’s what happened to me.’ It explained so many strange things in my life, like my phobia of hospitals…my eating disorders, my life on the rocks since the operation,” she was quoted as telling The Telegraph.

Le Scouarnec operated on Lévêque for appendicitis when she was nine years old. Investigators have confirmed that she was one of the victims. “The nights, the days, it was all I could think about. I had a big, big breakdown. I didn’t know who I was, where I lived or what was happening to me.”

Another victim was Guillaume, who was 12-years-old when the abuse took place. He said he had no recollection of the assault but on learning what had happened to him, he was suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. “Amnesia or not, what happened is just as traumatic. I live with the consequences every day. Amnesia doesn’t dilute the seriousness of the act,” he told The Telegraph.

Mathis is another one of Le Scouarnec’s victims. When he was 10, he was taken to hospital with stomach pains and came under the care of Joel Le Scouarnec. Mathis’ grandfather, Roland, has alleged that the surgeon then sexually assaulted the 10-year-old.

When the authorities approached their house, Roland said that Mathis feared that his drug use had attracted their attention. But when they told him what happened, his world came crashing in around him. In 2021, Mathis took his own life, aged just 24 years old.

Did authorities ignore previous warnings?

The trial of Le Scouarnec also raises questions about the failures of France’s health system. Many are asking one question: Were there no warnings to this abuse?

In fact, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2004 had alerted French authorities that Le Scouarnec’s credit card was linked to a paedophile website the agency was monitoring. However, it seems that no action was taken.

This is followed up by Le Scouarnec’s conviction in 2005 for possession of child sexual abuse imagery in 2005. Yet, he was allowed to continue to treat children unsupervised until his arrest.

As Francesca Satta, a lawyer representing some of Le Scouarnec’s alleged victims, told Sky News, “The evidence was there. There were searches at his home and they found indecent images of children. The diaries existed but were not discovered… he could have been stopped.”

This is echoed by Mauricette Vinet. He told the Observer, “There was an omertà. People knew but said nothing. If there hadn’t been this silence, then he’d have been banned from seeing children in 2004 and there would have been far fewer victims.”

What comes next?

Awaiting his trial in Vannes, Brittany, Le Scouarnec has admitted to investigators many of the accusations he faces. Le Scouarnec’s lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, has told French journalists: “He is waiting to be judged, to express himself, to say what he has to say to each of his victims. From the beginning he’s been ready to confront reality, to accept his responsibility.”

Stéphane Kellenberger, the prosecutor in the case, says Le Scouarnec faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted. However, it is unclear if he would serve that on top of the 15 years he is currently serving.

Child activists want this trial to modify the framework in France. Jean-Christophe Boyer, a lawyer for L’Enfant Bleu association, told the Associated Press that their one key purpose in this case is “to do something, perhaps modify the legal framework … to prevent this kind of situation from happening again.”

As French journalist Hugo Lemonier, who has written a book on the matter, told the New York Times that he hoped the trial would force French society to address its “collective blindness” to the all-powerful position of respect it offers doctors.

With inputs from agencies