Skandaliczne zaniedbania chirurga wobec setek dzieci ujawnione w pamiętniku
Joel Le Scouarnec, a 73-year-old retired surgeon, is set to stand trial this month in what is being called the biggest child abuse trial in French history. The accused is facing charges of assaulting and raping 299 children – mostly former patients – between 1989 and 2014, mainly in Brittany.
Le Scouarnec has admitted to some of the charges. How is it possible that he was able to harm children for so long without anyone noticing? It seems impossible. It appears that he was „protected” by those around him, who had an idea of what the surgeon may have been capable of. He was shielded by his colleagues and hospital management where he worked, despite warnings from the FBI to French authorities that he was browsing child abuse websites, for which he was only given a suspended sentence.
Even Le Scouarnec’s own family has sins on their conscience. „It was family omerta that allowed the abuse to continue for decades,” one of the lawyers involved in the case told BBC reporters. Le Scouarnec was only punished for a fraction of his crimes.
The suspect, once a respected surgeon in a small town, has been in prison since 2017 when he was arrested for raping his nieces, who are now in their 30s, as well as a six-year-old girl and a young patient. In 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
When Le Scouarnec was incarcerated, his home was searched, and investigators were shocked at what they found. They discovered child-sized erotic dolls, over 300,000 images of child abuse, and the perpetrator’s journals detailing his crimes. However, during questioning, Le Scouarnec claimed that the journals were just recordings of his fantasies. He is facing over 100 counts of rape and over 150 counts of sexual assault.
Former patients who were victims of the surgeon, now adults, recall how Le Scouarnec would touch them even when their parents were in the room. Many of the victims were unaware of the doctor’s crimes because they were under the influence of medication during their visits. Police were able to connect certain facts based on the journals, and when they reached out to potential victims, they were completely shocked. Le Scouarnec enjoyed „flirting with danger”
The newspaper Le Monde quoted a court ruling against the former doctor, stating that Le Scouarnec felt „all-powerful” and enjoyed „flirting with danger” through „deliberate wrongdoing.”
Francesca Satta, a lawyer representing several alleged victims, told the BBC that among her clients are „families of two men who remembered and ultimately took their own lives.”
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