After shocking Pelicot crimes, French surgeon to face trial in child sex abuse case

By Juliette Jabkhiro

NANTES, France (Reuters) - When police in western France searched surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec's home after he raped his 6-year-old neighbour in 2017, they found a cache of sex dolls, wigs and child pornography.

They said they also discovered electronic diaries that appeared to detail nearly three decades of rapes and sexual assaults on hundreds of his young patients in hospitals across the region.

In 2020, Le Scouarnec was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the rape and sexual assault of his child neighbour, as well as his two nieces and a 4-year-old patient.

However, the investigation continued into the alleged victims logged on his files. Prosecutors eventually charged him with the aggravated rape and sexual assault of 299 people, many of whom were children, and some of whom were anesthetized when the abuse allegedly took place.

On February 24, Le Scouarnec, 74, will face trial on those charges in the Breton town of Vannes, in France's largest ever child sexual abuse case.

Prosecutors say Le Scouarnec has admitted to investigators many of the accusations he faces. His lawyers declined to comment ahead of the trial.

The trial comes at a time of reckoning around sex crimes in France after the conviction of Dominique Pelicot, who was found guilty in December of drugging his wife and inviting dozens of men over to their home to rape her. Fifty other men were also convicted of rape in a case that shocked the world.

Le Scouarnec's case will raise tough questions for France's publicly run healthcare system, victims and rights groups say. Despite a conviction for child pornography in 2005, Le Scouarnec continued to work in public hospitals until his arrest in 2017.

The Health Ministry didn't respond to a request for comment.

Francois, a plaintiff in the case who was 12 when Le Scouarnec allegedly abused him, said he hoped the case would provide some answers from a system that he said failed him.

"I realize I shouldn't have been operated on by this surgeon," said Francois, who asked to be identified only by this name. "I feel betrayed by authorities ... Why did nobody forbid this surgeon from working with children?"

DIARY DESCRIPTIONS

After discovering Le Scouarnec's logs in 2017, investigators began tracking down potential victims by matching diary descriptions with hospital records. Although many of the anesthetized patients had no recollection of the alleged abuse, psychiatrists have documented symptoms of post-traumatic stress in victims, according to court documents.

Mathis Vinet was 10 in 2007 when his father and grandfather drove him to the Quimperle hospital with stomach pain.

The grandfather, Roland Vinet, 78, remembers meeting Le Scouarnec, and thinking nothing of the surgeon's order that Mathis spend the night alone in the hospital, he told Reuters.

In his diary, Le Scouarnec recalled sexually assaulting a little boy that same day and the following one, inappropriately touching his genitals each time, according to a court document.

Mathis was never the same after the hospital visit, Vinet said, eventually falling into a life of alcohol and drugs. He died of an overdose at 24 in 2021, three years after learning from the police about the abuse he allegedly had suffered, and having flashbacks.

Vinet and his wife, who are plaintiffs in the case, said they believed Mathis took his own life. They blame Le Scouarnec for their grandson's death.

Reuters couldn't establish the role the surgeon's alleged actions played in Mathis' death.

CHILD PORN CONVICTION

Le Scouarnec was given a suspended four-month jail sentence when he was convicted in 2005 for possessing child pornography. He secured a job as a surgeon at the Quimperle public hospital the following year.

A psychiatrist at the hospital alerted management to his concerns about Le Scouarnec's behaviour in 2006, a court document said, but the surgeon continued to work with children.

The Quimperle hospital didn't respond to a request for comment.

The prosecutor in Lorient, Stephane Kellenberger, whose office led the investigation into Le Scouarnec's alleged crimes, said he has opened a separate preliminary probe to ascertain if there was any criminal liability by agencies or individuals who could have prevented the abuse.

France's Medical Association declined to comment. The association's local branch in the Finistere administrative department, which court documents show was aware of Le Scouarnec's 2005 conviction, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

(Editing by Gabriel Stargardter and Frances Kerry)