French Ex-Surgeon Jailed For Raping Hundreds, Mainly Children

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

PARIS/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – A French former surgeon who admitted to sexually abusing at least 299 patients, mostly minors, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the biggest child abuse trial in France’s history.

The verdict meant that Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, became one of the most prolific convicted sexual predators in France.

The 20-year prison sentence is the maximum Le Scouarnec could have received for aggravated rape.

In France, sentences are not added together, unlike in the US, where Le Scouarnec would have been jailed for 2,000 years, explained state prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger to U.S. media.

However, Wednesday’s ruling increased pressure on the government to address failings in the health and justice systems.

Le Scouarnec committed his crimes while working as a digestive surgeon in public and private hospitals across Brittany and the west of France, often operating on children with appendicitis, prosecutors said.

During the harrowing three-month trial in Vannes, Brittany, he stood accused of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults between 1989 and 2014 at a dozen hospitals.

UNDER ANESTHETIC

Many of the children he assaulted were under anesthetic or waking up after operations. Some were attacked in their hospital beds. The average age of the victims was 11, according to investigators.

French Health Minister Yannick Neuder pledged to work with the justice minister to ensure that “never again will we find ourselves in a situation where patients and vulnerable children” were exposed to predators.

Le Scouarnec eventually admitted all the assaults in court, saying in his final statement: “I am not asking the court for leniency.” During the trial, he said: “I was a surgeon who benefited from my status to attack children; I don’t deny that.”

Psychological assessments found that he remained extremely dangerous.

Le Scouarnec’s lawyer, Maxime Tessier, said the French medical world and politicians must learn lessons from “the major dysfunction of our health system,” which had not stopped Le Scouarnec’s decades of abuse.

Le Scouarnec was reportedly flagged to the French authorities by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2004 for viewing child abuse imagery on “the dark web” online.

In 2005, he was convicted in a French court of owning child abuse imagery and given a four-year suspended prison sentence, but the court did not rule that the surgeon should never work with children.

PRESTIGIOUS JOBS

Angering victims and advocacy groups, he continued to gain prestigious jobs in hospitals across France until his retirement in 2017, systematically abusing children who had undergone surgery.

Victims’ groups and child protection campaigners said the trial had raised the issue of serious failings by the state and officials.

They said there should be a complete government assessment of how the surgeon had been able to continue working and abusing for so long.

Judge Aude Buresi told the courthouse in Vannes, a coastal town in Brittany where the majority of the abuse took place, that

“It was predation on victims, the most vulnerable when they were sick in the hospital.”

Besides sentencing to prison, she also barred the former surgeon from ever practicing medicine or having contact with minors.

The judge said he must serve two-thirds of his sentence before being eligible for parole.

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