Joel Le Scouarnec tells court he committed ‘despicable act’ in another mass rape case that shocks France.

A French court has sentenced a retired surgeon to 20 years in prison for raping or sexually abusing nearly 300 victims, many of them children under anaesthesia, over 25 years of his career in another case of years-long abuse that has rocked the nation.

The conviction and sentencing on Wednesday in the Brittany court capped what is widely seen as the worst case of abuse of children that has ever gone to trial in modern France.

It comes after 51 men were convicted of taking part in the decade-long mass rape of a woman, Gisele Pelicot, in southern France in what many advocates hoped would be a watershed #MeToo moment for those seeking justice against their abusers.

Throughout the most recent trial, 74-year-old Joel Le Scouarnec admitted to raping or sexually abusing 299 patients – including 256 victims under the age of 15 – as he worked in hospitals in western France.

The attacks took place from 1989 to 2014, many while his patients were under anaesthesia or waking up after operations. All told, Le Scouarnec was charged with 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults in the case, which began in February.

Throughout the trial, Le Scouarnec told the court he committed “despicable acts”.

“I owe it to all these people and their loved ones to admit my actions and their consequences, which they’ve endured and will keep having to endure all their lives,” he said at one point.

Victims ‘will never forgive you, never’

But victims, lawyers and advocates who gathered at the courthouse throughout the trial and on Wednesday for the verdict said they put little stock in Le Scouarnec’s words of contrition.

“You are the worst mass paedophile who ever lived,” Thomas Delaby, one of about 60 lawyers representing the victims, said during the trial. He described Le Scouarnec as an “atomic bomb of paedophilia”.

Delaby told Le Scouarnec the victims “will never forgive you, never”.

Le Scouarnec had previously been convicted in 2020 for raping and sexually assaulting four children, including two of his nieces. He was already serving a 15-year sentence as the current trial played out.

The 20-year sentence is the maximum possible. In France, sentences are not served consecutively. In the United States, prosecutors noted, Le Scouarnec would have been sentenced to “2,000 years”.

Questions over public health system

The case has raised questions about France’s publicly run health system and how Le Scouarnec was able to act with impunity for so many years.

Advocates have demanded to know why he was allowed to continue working in public hospitals despite being convicted in 2005 of downloading images of child sexual abuse. At the time, he received a suspended jail sentence.

The extent of Le Scouarnec’s abuse was revealed only after his rearrest in 2017 on suspicion of raping his 6-year-old neighbour.  Police then discovered electronic diaries that appeared to document decades of abuse in painstaking detail.

In his notes, the doctor described himself as a “major pervert” and a “paedophile”.

“And I am very happy about it,” he wrote.

Wednesday’s verdict was handed down during what some hope will be a wider reckoning over sexual abuse in France and what some see as social mores that enable such crimes.

In December, a court in the southern French city of Avignon convicted 51 men of the years-long rape and sexual abuse of Pelicot, who refused to remain anonymous during the proceedings and whose clear-eyed testimony resonated among the French public.

“I’ve decided not to be ashamed, I’ve done nothing wrong,” she testified during the trial. “They are the ones who must be ashamed.”

Among those convicted was Pelicot’s ex-husband, 72-year-old Dominique Pelicot, who prosecutors said orchestrated the drugging and raping of his wife for nearly a decade.