Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice have learned that one of the most shocking trials in the history of the country will begin on February 24, 2025 in the French city of Vannes. In the dock will be 73-year-old Joël Le Scouarnec, a former surgeon accused of sexualized abuse of 299 children between 1989 and 2014. The average age of the victims was 11 years old. The Foundation’s experts believe that this trial is the result of criminal negligence by France’s law enforcement agencies and serious dysfunction in both its judicial and health care systems, which allowed the pedophile surgeon to rape hundreds of young patients over decades.
In France, former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec will stand trial on charges of sexually abusing hundreds of minors. Many of the victims were allegedly under anesthesia. The case is being called the largest child abuse case in the nation’s history. Le Skuarnec is accused of sexually abusing 299 patients, 158 males and 141 females, between 1989 and 2014. A total of 256 of them were under the age of 15, with an average age of 11. Most of the victims were his former patients. Joël Le Scouarnec, 73, worked as a surgeon in public and private hospitals throughout Brittany and western France.
Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice say the horrifying testimony of a record number of alleged victims of a pedophile surgeon raises serious concerns not only about the level of child protection in France, but also about the apparent crisis of the French justice and health systems.
Frédéric Benoit, a lawyer for La Voix de L’Enfant (The Voice of the Child), the child protection charity acting as a civil party in the case, called shocking the “chain of failures and dysfunction” at the institutional level that allowed Le Scouarnec to continue committing crimes for years. Benoit filed a separate court complaint on behalf of the charity for failing in its duty to protect children at the institutional level.
According to Benoit, when agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation first informed French authorities in 2004 about the Internet activity of Le Scouarnec, who was found to be viewing child abuse images, he was not arrested. A search of his home turned up no evidence. But police did not search his hospital office, where they could have found images on his work computer and sex toys hidden in a closet. It wasn’t until 2005 that Le Skuarnec was convicted of accessing child abuse images on the Internet and given a four-year suspended sentence. However, the judge did not order him to undergo psychiatric treatment or ban him from working with children. The court, contrary to the rules, did not immediately inform the hospital system or the National Medical Board. In addition, a doctor at the hospital where Le Scouarnec worked warned management in 2006 about his strange behavior and suspicious tendencies. Another emergency room physician also reported that Le Skuarnec viewed child abuse images while working. Nevertheless, Le Skuarnec continued to receive prestigious positions at hospitals across the country.
“Dysfunction on so many levels has led to the disaster that this case is,” said Frédéric Benoit.
Evidence in the four-month trial will include handwritten notebooks in which Le Skuarnec listed the initials of patients and his alleged crimes against them. Police matched the notebooks with hospital records to identify potential victims, some of whom were unconscious and under anesthesia at the time.
“Many of the victims were in a hospital operating room, under anesthesia, recovering from surgery, under sedation or sedated, so they could not have realized what was being done to them,” explained prosecutor Stefan Kellenberger.
Francesca Satta, a lawyer for 10 victims, including the families of two men who killed themselves after gendarmes told them what had happened to them, said:
“This trial is unusual because, to my knowledge, nowhere in the world has there been a child abuse trial with so many victims.”
Satta said that for many of the alleged victims, now in their 30s and 40s, it was horrifying to hear excerpts from Le Scouarnec’s diaries that touched them as children.
In 2017, neighbors in Jonzac, Charente-Maritimes, reported Le Scouarnec to the police. A police raid in his home led to the discovery of violent images, notebooks and a collection of dolls hidden under the floorboards. In 2020, Le Scuarnec was sentenced to 15 years for abusing four children, one of whom was a hospital patient.
Satta said the 2020 trial, which was not held in public, showed “a manipulator who had no empathy or understanding of other people he viewed as sexual objects.” She said the second trial, in which Le Skuarnec faces 20 years in prison, will show how flaws in the justice and health care systems allowed him to continue committing crimes.
“This trial will open the door to a real judicial examination of child abuse in France and how it should be dealt with, in terms of sentencing and prevention,” Francesca Satta said.
Human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice are concerned about the lack of positive dynamics in addressing the underlying problems of the judicial system in France and believe that the consequences of this situation are numerous: loss of authority, distrust in the justice system, undermining democracy, violation of human rights and freedoms. The Foundation strongly condemns sexual violence against children and the negligence of French law enforcement agencies. The Foundation’s human rights defenders demand compliance with international agreements on the protection of children’s rights and a comprehensive and impartial investigation into the crimes of former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec.