A 74 year old former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec has bagged 20 years in prison on Wednesday for the rape and sexual abuse of hundreds of patients, most of them children under the age of 15.
Le Scouarnec, a former digestive surgeon who operated in both public and private hospitals across Brittany and western France, faced charges of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults committed between 1989 and 2014. His victims were often under anaesthetic or recovering from surgery when the abuse occurred. The average age of the children was 11.
During the three-month trial in the town of Vannes, Le Scouarnec admitted to all charges and made no plea for leniency. “I was a surgeon who benefited from my status to attack children. I don’t deny that,” he said in court. Psychological evaluations have deemed him still highly dangerous.
A Systemic Failure
Le Scouarnec’s crimes continued for decades, despite early warning signs. In 2004, the FBI flagged him to French authorities for accessing child sexual abuse imagery on the dark web. A year later, he was convicted in France for possessing such material and received a four-year suspended sentence. The court, however, failed to bar him from working with children.
He continued practising, receiving top surgical appointments at hospitals desperate to retain experienced professionals. One hospital director, Michèle Cals, testified that Le Scouarnec had disclosed his conviction but convinced her it was tied to personal distress from a marital separation. With no directive from medical authorities against his hiring, she appointed him in 2008. “We needed surgeons,” Cals said.
Critics have described the decades of inaction as a collective failure of the French medical and judicial systems. Thierry Bonvalot, a psychiatrist who attempted to raise concerns about Le Scouarnec, described the cover-up as a “medical fiasco.” Joël Belloc, head of the local Order of Physicians, conceded, “With hindsight, it’s obvious we could have done more.”
A National Reckoning
Victims and child protection groups are now demanding sweeping reforms. Outside the courthouse earlier this month, survivors and their families protested the silence of the political establishment. “We are appalled to see that this trial of the century is not a watershed event in the eyes of the government and, more broadly, the general public,” a victims’ group said in a statement.
One survivor, Manon Lemoine, who was raped at age 11, told reporters: “They’re trying to make him out to be a monster, but this monster is the society that created him and allowed him to continue.”
The state prosecutor, Stéphane Kellenberger, emphasised the magnitude of the case, noting that Le Scouarnec would likely have faced a 2,000-year sentence if tried under U.S. legal standards. France, however, does not combine sentences; the 20-year term is the maximum allowed for aggravated rape.
Le Scouarnec is already serving a 15-year sentence from a 2020 conviction involving four other children. The prosecutor’s office has opened an additional investigation into potential victims not included in the current trial, hinting that the full scale of the abuse may still be unfolding.
Kellenberger condemned the former surgeon in his closing remarks. “You were the devil, and sometimes the devil is dressed in a white coat,” he said.
As France prepares for the verdict, many are left asking how such prolonged abuse could go unchecked and how to ensure that it never happens again.
