Joël Le Scouarnec, an abdominal surgeon with a love of opera and fine literature, did not hide his criminal record when he applied for a job at a local hospital in Jonzac, after moving to the southwestern French town in June 2008.
Despite informing the hospital’s director that he had been convicted three years previously for possession of sexually abusive images of children, and given a four-month suspended sentence, she didn’t believe he posed a threat, and hired him.
The retired surgeon is now on trial in France accused of the rape and sexual assault of 299 patients – most of them children – between 1989 and 2014. Prosecutors say he acted with impunity for nearly three decades, working across up to a dozen hospitals and clinics, targeting his victims when they were at their most vulnerable, while under anaesthetic, or recovering from surgical procedures. He would roam the corridors, they say, striking when the opportunity arose, taking advantage of moments when a parent left a child’s bedside to get a coffee, or when nurses were called away.
As the trial, which is expected to last four months, opened in the city of Vannes this week, the now 74-year-old told the court that he was ready to “take responsibility” for his actions. “I have done hideous things,” he said. “I am perfectly aware that these wounds are indelible,” that they “cannot be erased or healed”. He has acknowledged responsibility for a portion of the alleged rapes and sexual assaults, but claims other acts on which he stands accused did not fall under those categories.
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His victims say those “hideous things” could have been prevented.
Concerns about the surgeon’s conviction for sharing images of child abuse were first raised by colleagues at a hospital in Brittany in 2006. Not only were those concerns brushed aside, but a glowing reference was furnished by management when Le Scouarnec was summoned to appear for questioning before the regional medical association. The oversight body duly ruled that his actions had not violated the medical code of ethics. Rather than being fired by the hospital, he was later promoted to head surgeon, and would continue to work with children, unsupervised and without sanction, until his retirement in 2017.
The case has raised deeply uncomfortable questions for the French state. Campaigners have pointed to collective failings by both health and judicial authorities, saying those shortcomings enabled Le Scouarnec to keep offending. They also argue that, as a whole, French society has yet to come to terms with the gravity of sexual offences.
“Viewing or downloading images of child abuse is considered to be a misdemeanour rather than a crime,” says Laure Boutron-Marmion, a lawyer with the association Face à l’Inceste. “Those accused of such offences try to minimise their actions by claiming that it was a ‘one-off’ or a ‘mistake’. But we are talking about images of children being assaulted, raped, sometimes even tortured, and they are being viewed for sexual gratification.”
When police raided Le Scouarnec’s home after a 2017 accusation of the abuse of a six-year-old child who lived next door, they recovered 300,000 images of abuse, as well as hundreds of notebooks and diaries. The surgeon had made meticulous notes in his diaries that appeared to outline in graphic detail almost daily assaults on patients, including their names, ages and addresses, which will form the backbone of the case against him. He is currently serving a 15-year sentence, having been found guilty in December 2020 of molesting his neighbour’s daughter and three other children: his two nieces and a four-year-old patient.
The trial takes place as France is recovering from the trial of Dominique Pelicot, who was convicted two months ago of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife, Gisèle Pelicot. That case sent shock waves through France and the world, prompting an outcry and igniting a public debate about rape and the notion of consent. In a chilling echo, many of the victims in the Le Scouranec case were still sedated or drowsy when they were believed to have been raped or sexually assaulted. Few remembered the abuse until the police contacted them.
The trial also comes as prime minister François Bayrou faces accusations that as education minister in the 1990s, he had been aware of allegations of sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school to which he had sent his own children, and where his wife worked as a teacher, but failed to act. He denies the claims.
Will these cases serve as a catalyst for wider societal change in a country that was notoriously slow to embrace the #MeToo movement? That would have seemed unlikely a year ago, when President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a “witch hunt” while defending the revered actor Gérard Depardieu, who has been accused of sexual assault (allegations he denies). But since then there have been some signs of progress. Last month, French film director Christophe Ruggia was convicted of sexually assaulting the actor Adéle Haenel when she was underage.
Activists are calling for ambitious government policies to tackle sexual violence. They point out that while crimes involving foreign-born perpetrators routinely prompt swift pledges of action on immigration, there is little political will to push for legislative reform in the wake of the Pelicot revelations.
Elsa Labouret, a spokeswoman for Osez le Féminisme says her association and others have made 140 recommendations to the government, including increasing funding for rape services, and providing specialist training for police, judges and legal professionals. She says that sexual assault is still massively underreported, and that when victims do come forward, convictions are rare. “The things that were said in favour of Gisèle Pelicot, for example, can be used against other women, those who aren’t perceived to be the ‘perfect victim’, or women who are younger, or from a different background or race. We need to believe all victims.
“These high-profile trials have definitely started a conversation,” she says. “I don’t think that attitudes [towards sexual violence] have changed that much. But these things take time. People understand, on a surface level, that these crimes are horrifying. But these exceptionally disturbing cases, like that of this French surgeon, I don’t believe that they necessarily provoke a wider reckoning.”
Sharon Gaffney is a journalist based in France
