A French surgeon convicted of sexually abusing his patients while they were under anaesthetic has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
A court in western France handed Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, the maximum sentence on Wednesday.
Le Scouarnec admitted to sexually abusing 299 people, mostly children. The average age of his victims was 11.
A group of victims have called for institutional change in France in response.
Background
Le Scouarnec worked as an abdominal surgeon across dozens of French hospitals.
After retiring in 2017, he was charged with raping two of his nieces, as well as a six-year-old girl and another young patient.
Evidence seized from his home in western France included child-sized sex dolls, hundreds of thousands of child abuse images, and 25 years’ worth of Le Scouarnec’s personal diaries. Across thousands of diary entries, Le Scouarnec appeared to describe assaulting several young patients.
The retired doctor denied the charges and said the diaries were “fantasies,” rather than accounts of real events.
He was found guilty of abusing all four children and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in 2020, while police continued working to identify the victims named in his diaries.
He was eventually charged with over 100 counts of rape and 150 sexual assault offences.
The charges found the surgeon assaulted or raped 299 patients between 1989 and 2014. Of the victims, 256 were under 15, including a one-year-old baby. The oldest victim was aged 70 at the time of the incident.
Trial
Le Scouarnec’s trial began in Brittany at the end of February.
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Le Scouarnec initially denied several charges, but admitted to the inappropriate touching of some patients.
In March, however, he admitted to sexually assaulting all of the 299 victims.
In a court statement last week Le Scouarnec said: “I can no longer look at myself the same way because I am a paedophile and a child rapist.”
Verdict
On Wednesday, Le Scouarnec was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence available. He must serve at least two-thirds of the sentence before being eligible for release.
Le Scouarnec will serve the new sentence at the same time as the existing 15-year prison sentence handed down in 2020, with any added time in prison served after the original sentence. Due to being imprisoned during his first trial, he has now served seven years in prison, meaning his new sentence will be two-thirds completed by 2030.
Response
The prosecution, advocates, and victims have expressed disapproval of the verdict, comparing it to countries where sentences can be stacked and served consecutively, not concurrently.
According to CNN, a group of victims have called for structural change, saying the trial “seems to leave no mark on the government, the medical community, or society at large”.
French Health Minister Yannick Neuder told local media: “We must act… so that this situation doesn’t happen again.”
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