France prepares for trial of surgeon accused of abusing anaesthetised children

A former surgeon is set to stand trial this month in what is considered the largest child abuse case in French history, accused of abusing hundreds of young patients, many while they were under anesthesia. Joel Le Scouarnec, 73, is accused of sexually assaulting or raping 299 children, mostly his former patients, between 1989 and 2014, primarily in the Brittany region. He has admitted to some of the accusations but not all.

The trial, taking place in the northwestern French city of Vannes, follows years of meticulous investigation by police. The case is likely to raise disturbing questions about whether Le Scouarnec was protected by colleagues and the hospital management that employed him. Despite warnings from the FBI to French authorities that he had been browsing child abuse websites, he only received a suspended sentence.

Shockingly, numerous opportunities to prevent the former surgeon from accessing children appear to have been missed or dismissed. His family also allegedly knew of Le Scouarnec's pedophilia but failed to stop him. "It was the silence of the family that allowed his abuse to continue for decades," a lawyer involved in the case told the BBC.

Le Scouarnec, once a respected small-town surgeon, has been held in prison since 2017 after being arrested for allegedly raping his niece, now in her 30s, a six-year-old girl, and a young patient. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2020. After his arrest, police searched his home and found child sex dolls, more than 300,000 child abuse images, and thousands of pages of meticulously compiled diaries in which Le Scouarnec allegedly recorded his attacks on young patients over 25 years. He denies attacking or raping children, claiming his diaries merely detailed his "fantasies." However, in several instances, he also wrote: "I am a pedophile."

Le Scouarnec faces more than 100 counts of rape and more than 150 counts of sexual assault. Some of his former patients, now adults, say they remember the surgeon touching them under the guise of medical examinations, sometimes even in the presence of their parents or other doctors. But because many of his alleged victims were reportedly under anesthesia when the attacks occurred, they have no memory of the events, and were shocked when police contacted them with their names and details of the alleged abuse that appeared in Le Scouarnec's diaries.

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, citing the court's ruling against the former surgeon, Le Scouarnec felt "omnipotent" and enjoyed the feeling of "playing with danger" through "planned transgressions." Some victims have said that these disturbing revelations have helped them understand unexplained trauma symptoms that have plagued them their entire lives. Francesca Satta, a lawyer representing several victims, told the BBC that among her clients are "the families of two men who remembered what happened and ended up committing suicide."

Olivia Mons, of the French victims' association, has spoken to many of the victims, saying that some of them have only vague memories of the events and have never been able to "find the words to explain." When the surgeon's case came to light, "it offered them a beginning of an explanation," Ms. Mons said. But she added that most of the victims are those who have no memory of being raped or assaulted, and they had been living normal lives before the police contacted them. "Today, many of these people are understandably very shocked," Ms. Mons said.

One woman told French media that memories flooded back when police showed her entries in Le Scouarnec's diaries with her name on them. "I had a flashback of someone coming into my room, pulling back the sheets, and saying he was going to check that everything was OK," she said. "He raped me." Margo Castex, another victim's lawyer, told the BBC that her client "was traumatized by having trusted a medical professional, and that trauma is very difficult to erase." "He wishes he had never been told what happened," Ms. Castex said.

Another woman, named Marie, now a married mother in her thirties, said that police came to her home to reveal that her name appeared in the diary of a surgeon accused of abusing children. "They read out what he wrote about me, and I wanted to read it myself, but that wasn't possible," she told France Bleu radio. "Can you imagine reading hardcore porn and knowing that it's about you, as a child?" Marie said that she had been seeing mental health professionals for years because she had "issues" with men, and doctors had suspected she had experienced childhood trauma.

"I had to believe that my memory was protecting me. But the [police] investigation brought everything back to the surface - images, sensations, memories that came back to me day after day," she said. "Today, I feel like it all just happened." Marie added that when she saw a photo of Le Scouarnec, "it all came back to me... I remember his cold gaze." She wonders how the surgeon was able to commit his alleged crimes unnoticed for so long. It is a disturbing question that is sure to be explored in depth during the trial.

The first court proceedings have heard claims that several members of Le Scouarnec's family were aware of his disturbing behavior towards children as early as the mid-1980s but did not intervene. His ex-wife denies knowing what her husband - the father of their three children - was doing before his arrest. Le Scouarnec - a medical professional and lover of opera and literature - had long been the pride of his middle-class family. His status as a respected small-town doctor for many years likely afforded him a considerable degree of protection in the workplace. "A huge dysfunction allowed Le Scouarnec to commit his acts," lawyer Frederic Benoist told the BBC.

Mr. Benoist represents the child protection advocacy group "The Voice of the Child," which is working to highlight what they say are "critical institutional and judicial failures" that allowed Le Scouarnec to allegedly continue abusing children for decades. In the early 2000s, the FBI warned French authorities that Le Scouarnec had been visiting child abuse websites, but he ultimately only received a four-month suspended sentence with no obligation to receive medical or psychological treatment. Mr. Benoist said that prosecutors never communicated this information to medical authorities, and Le Scouarnec, without any repercussions, continued his job as a surgeon, often operating on children and managing their post-operative care.

When a colleague - who already had suspicions about Le Scouarnec - read about the allegations against him in a local newspaper in 2006, he urged the regional medical association to take action. With the exception of one doctor who abstained, all doctors voted that Le Scouarnec had not violated the medical code of ethics, which states that doctors "must be worthy of trust in all circumstances and act with integrity and dedication to duty." No sanctions were imposed. "So, we have evidence that all these colleagues knew, but they didn't do anything," Mr. Benoist said. "There were many opportunities to stop him; but he wasn't stopped, and the consequences are tragic." The BBC has contacted the regional medical association and the prosecutor for comment.

Le Scouarnec was finally arrested when a six-year-old victim told her parents that he had assaulted her. By then, he was living like a recluse in a large, derelict house, surrounded by child-sized dolls. Ms. Deriggs, the niece's lawyer, sat opposite Le Scouarnec at his 2020 trial in the southwestern town of Saintes. "His answers were cold and calculated," she said. "He is very intelligent, but he showed no empathy." Ms. Deriggs said that the trial revealed more allegations of child abuse within Le Scouarnec's family, but the former surgeon never reacted in any particular way, mostly just looking at the floor.

On one occasion, the court played a pornographic video of Le Scouarnec with his dolls. "Everyone was looking at the screen, but I was looking at him," Ms. Deriggs said. "Before that, he had always kept his head down. But at that moment, he lifted his head and stared at the video, his eyes gleaming." As the city of Vannes prepares to host the trial, three lecture halls in a former university building nearby have been made available for the hundreds of victims, their legal representatives, and family members. The trial is set to begin on February 24 and is expected to last until June. Whether the media and the public will be allowed access will depend on all the victims waiving their right to request a closed-door trial.

Many lawyers believe that the trial could be a moment for authorities to reflect on their failure to take action against Le Scouarnec, as well as an important moment for the victims to express their trauma. Ms. Satta said that although many involved in the case have no memory of what happened to them, they are still victims, adding that the former surgeon has long enjoyed "silent impunity." "The trial will be a moment for victims to speak out," Mr. Benoist agreed. "If the trial is held behind closed doors, in my opinion, it would be terrible."