Joel Le Scouarnec tells court he committed ‘despicable act’ in another mass rape case that shocks France.
A French court has sentenced a retired surgeon to 20 years in prison for raping or sexually abusing nearly 300 victims, many of them children under anaesthesia, over 25 years of his career in another case of years-long abuse that has rocked the nation.
The conviction and sentencing on Wednesday in the Brittany court capped what is widely seen as the worst case of abuse of children that has ever gone to trial in modern France.
It comes after 51 men were convicted of taking part in the decade-long mass rape of a woman, Gisele Pelicot, in southern France in what many advocates hoped would be a watershed #MeToo moment for those seeking justice against their abusers.
Throughout the most recent trial, 74-year-old Joel Le Scouarnec admitted to raping or sexually abusing 299 patients – including 256 victims under the age of 15 – as he worked in hospitals in western France.
The attacks took place from 1989 to 2014, many while his patients were under anaesthesia or waking up after operations. All told, Le Scouarnec was charged with 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults in the case, which began in February.
Throughout the trial, Le Scouarnec told the court he committed “despicable acts”.
“I owe it to all these people and their loved ones to admit my actions and their consequences, which they’ve endured and will keep having to endure all their lives,” he said at one point.
Victims ‘will never forgive you, never’
But victims, lawyers and advocates who gathered at the courthouse throughout the trial and on Wednesday for the verdict said they put little stock in Le Scouarnec’s words of contrition.
“You are the worst mass paedophile who ever lived,” Thomas Delaby, one of about 60 lawyers representing the victims, said during the trial. He described Le Scouarnec as an “atomic bomb of paedophilia”.
Delaby told Le Scouarnec the victims “will never forgive you, never”.
Le Scouarnec had previously been convicted in 2020 for raping and sexually assaulting four children, including two of his nieces. He was already serving a 15-year sentence as the current trial played out.
The 20-year sentence is the maximum possible. In France, sentences are not served…