When Mauricette Vénétie speaks of her grandson, her voice is filled with love. "He was a lovely little boy. He certainly had a strong personality! But he was always thinking of others, always asking if he could help," says the French retiree in her 80s.
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03-04, 2025"He loved being in the garden with his grandfather, picking green beans. He was a charming boy, Mathis," she adds. "But, as you know, there is a 'before' – and there is an 'after.'"
Mauricette and her husband, Roland, are among the 267 plaintiffs who have filed charges against Joël Le Scouarnec, a former French surgeon accused of abusing nearly 300 people – mostly children, and almost all his patients – over several decades. The trial began on Monday in Vannes, Brittany.
Le Scouarnec only met Mathis once, when the 10-year-old was admitted to a clinic in the small town of Quimperlé, in north-western France, for one night. Le Scouarnec – a mild-mannered, respected gastroenterologist – told Mathis' parents that the child would have to stay overnight for tests.
It turned out that Mathis simply had a stomach ache and was sent home the next day. But Mauricette is convinced that the brief hospital stay changed Mathis forever. "The unease gradually began. It happened gradually in the first year; then he was no longer happy and began to be aggressive towards everyone," she told the BBC.
It cannot be definitively determined whether Mathis' troubles were related to the surgeon. What is certain is that, as a teenager, Mathis distanced himself from his family and began using increasingly strong drugs; later, he spent time in detoxification and rehabilitation centres.
Then in 2018, the police knocked on his door. They told him that a man named Joël Le Scouarnec had been arrested the previous year for raping his six-year-old neighbour. While searching the surgeon's home, police found a trove of diaries and hard drives in which Le Scouarnec appeared to have listed hundreds of victims. Mathis' name was among them.
Mauricette says Mathis told her that the police then read him an excerpt from the diary that seemed to detail the abuse Le Scouarnec had inflicted on him during his hospital stay. "Then they left. Mathis closed the door, alone, without help. That was the beginning of the descent into hell," Mauricette said.
Mauricette says the visit from the police helped Mathis understand the flashbacks that had long plagued him: "His unease finally made sense; he traced it back to its roots." Mathis filed charges against Le Scouarnec, but the revelations sent him into a downward spiral that came to an abrupt end on 14 April 2021, when Mathis died of a drug overdose. He was 24 years old.
Mauricette and her husband filed charges the next day, and they are now listed as "indirect victims" of Le Scouarnec. Since the trial began on Monday, they have attended the hearings in Vannes, north-western France, every day. This is no easy task.
The testimony of witnesses – mainly close relatives of Le Scouarnec, who is now 74 years old – paints a picture of a seemingly ordinary family, but behind the scenes, the family was ravaged by child abuse, incest and sexual violence. Le Scouarnec's sister, Annie, said she was "taught to keep quiet." This week, it has all been made public.
Le Scouarnec's three sons spoke to the court in almost apologetic tones about their happy childhood with a cultured, knowledgeable father who may not have been particularly present, but was kind, patient and supportive. "We had holidays, a nice house – everything that makes up a normal family," one of them said.
The youngest son – who said he stopped contacting Le Scouarnec in 2017 "to preserve the impression of him from my childhood" – said he now "harbours distrust towards everyone" and never leaves his young children alone with anyone. "I'm always worried that if my father could do this, then my neighbour, my partner, anyone could," the 37-year-old said.
Later, the middle son – a tall man in his early 40s who admitted to being a "not entirely teetotal alcoholic" – shared memories of being abused by his grandfather, Le Scouarnec's father. He was shocked when he was first told in court that his father's alleged victims included some of his childhood friends.
On Friday, the court fell into stunned silence when Le Scouarnec admitted that he had abused his granddaughter – the daughter of his eldest son, who was less than five years old at the time. Moments after the revelation, the 44-year-old and his partner left the room to receive help from a psychologist.
Other witnesses caused panic among the plaintiffs. Due to the large number, they were seated in a separate room – a former university lecture hall – and followed the proceedings via video link. Christian D., a friend of Le Scouarnec, now 80 years old, often answered the court's questions in a sarcastic tone and repeatedly downplayed the importance of the events at the centre of the trial, declaring that he could not "cry for everything that happens in the world."
Later, he insisted that he had "never seen anything and therefore had nothing to say about the devastating allegations against his friend." When he said that he would take Le Scouarnec in if he left prison, many of the alleged victims in the lecture hall got up and left their seats.
But for Mauricette and Roland, the most difficult thing was the highly anticipated testimony of Le Scouarnec's ex-wife, Marie-France L. She is alleged to be central to the code of silence that prevailed in the Le Scouarnec family, as she was repeatedly aware of her husband's obsession with children but did nothing to stop it.
Many lawyers and plaintiffs now believe that she could have prevented hundreds of children from being abused. Le Scouarnec's brother – who was also heard this week – openly wondered whether she was too enamoured of the lifestyle afforded by her husband's salary to speak out.
Marie-France has always denied this, and on the witness stand, she was arrogant and often provocative in the face of the accusations against her. "The disaster has happened: she knows I'm a paedophile," Le Scouarnec wrote in his diary as early as the mid-1990s. "Perhaps he was talking about his conscience," Marie-France told the court.
She also implied that her five-year-old niece – whom Le Scouarnec has been convicted of raping – had likely "manipulated" her husband. "She's cunning, that one. She likes the attention," she said. Later, she complained that she was being "blamed" for everything. She only appeared visibly shocked when she saw a montage of indecent photos of their sons as children made by Le Scouarnec.
"That was absolute theatre," Mauricette told the BBC, adding that Christian D.'s testimony was "despicable" and that she believes Marie-France lives in "pure denial."
As the heartbreaking events unfolded, Le Scouarnec sat in his box – mostly unresponsive, but sometimes visibly agitated, his voice hoarse when he begged his sons for forgiveness. He winced when excerpts from his diary were read out, and averted his gaze when indecent photos he had taken of his nieces were shown.
His lawyer says he admits to "most" of the charges against him and that he will explain himself during the trial, which is expected to last until June. Alleged victims will begin testifying next week; Mauricette and Roland will do so in April. "I will look at Le Scouarnec and tell him what is in my heart – that he killed my grandson," Mauricette said.
"Not with a gun, but he killed him," she added. "He will get 20 years in prison, but his victims... will have to live with this for the rest of their lives. Their sentence will be longer than his."
Throughout the week, people have come and gone in the victims' hall, but most have stayed for several hours straight each day. As descriptions of trauma and abuse poured in, a middle-aged woman covered her face with her hands and remained that way for a long time. Next to her, a young man rubbed his eyes repeatedly before getting up and leaving.
