Joël Le Scouarnec, the former surgeon at the center of France’s largest child sexual abuse case, was handed a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison Wednesday as his three-month-long trial reached its end.
French courts convicted Le Scouarnec, 74, of sexually assaulting 299 victims over three decades, most of them girls and boys whose average age was 11. Many were assaulted while they were under the effects of anesthesia or recovering from surgery, prosecutors said.
Himself a father of three, Le Scouarnec confessed to committing “hideous acts” during the trial in the northwestern town of Vannes in the region of Brittany, where he admitted to all of the charges.
“I am not asking the court for leniency,” Le Scouarnec said in his closing statement, adding, “Simply grant me the right to become a better person.”
His sentence will run concurrently with the 15 years he is serving after he was found guilty in 2020 of raping a young neighbor and three others when they were children.
The court said Le Scouarnec’s sentence cannot be adjusted until he has served two-thirds of it, in order to prevent recidivism, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. The judges also followed the public prosecutor’s recommendations about the sentence.
After lawyers for some of the victims complained that he could be released by 2030 if his pretrial detention and parole eligibility were taken into account, the prosecution made a rare request that he be held in a treatment center under supervision even after his release. It was not clear whether the court granted the request.
Hundreds of witnesses testified at the trial, including Le Scouarnec’s niece and a family friend. Now in their 40s, both said he assaulted them in the early 1980s. However, French law did not allow him to be prosecuted for their alleged abuse because it happened too long ago.
Many victims have said they do not remember being assaulted, but police were able to build a case against Le Scouarnec because he meticulously cataloged his abuse in digital diaries.
In France it is illegal for an adult to have sex with a minor under age 15, though child advocates say many adults are never charged.
The case has put a spotlight on the French medical system, which allowed Le Scouarnec, a once-respected local doctor, to continue working despite many warning signs, including a 2005 conviction for possessing images depicting child abuse.
Lawyers for some of the victims said Le Scouarnec should have been stripped of his medical privileges after that case. Instead, he worked across nine public hospitals and private clinics in five regions of France, where he specialized in appendectomies, abdominal and gynecological surgery.
Victims’ advocates also hope the case will prompt a hard look at what they call the lax pursuit of child abuse allegations, particularly when doctors — who are in short supply in many areas — are accused of misconduct.
“There were warnings over 30 years,” Francesca Satta, a lawyer who represented 10 victims and families, said previously, adding, “This man benefited from a system that opened the door for him to have his own hunting ground.”
During the trial, many victims watched the proceedings through a video link in a 450-seat auditorium, a short walk from the courthouse, which was too small to cope with the number of people who wanted to watch the case unfold. Two other transmission rooms in a former law school broadcast the trial to the media and spectators.
