Sons of French surgeon on trial say his crimes ‘destroyed’ family

Two sons of Joel Le Scouarnec, a French former surgeon on trial for the alleged assault or rape of 299 patients, told a court Tuesday of the devastation their father’s case had wrought on the family.

Most of Le Scouarnec’s victims were children whom he is believed to have abused while they were waking up from anaesthetic or during post-op checkups, at a dozen hospitals between 1989 and 2014.

A total of 256 of them were under 15, with the youngest aged one and the oldest 70.

The case has caused outrage and revulsion in a France still traumatised by the revelations of the recent trial of Dominique Pelicot, who was convicted of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife.

It has also been a living nightmare for Le Scouarnec’s family, the sons told the Morbihan criminal court in western France.

“His perversion has exploded like an atomic bomb in our family,” said Le Scouarnec’s 42-year-old son.

ALSO READ: French surgeon on trial for abusing nearly 300 patients

“I don’t know where that perversion came from. I don’t even understand it.”

Comparing his father to “Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde” — a comparison his mother, Le Scouarnec’s ex-wife, has also used — he told the court he was still struggling to reconcile the accused’s alleged crimes with the image of the father he knew.

“I have these images in my head now, and I’ll have them for the rest of my life,” he said.

The 42-year-old told the court he had himself been raped and sexually abused by his grandfather, Le Scouarnec’s father, from the ages of five to 10 years old.

Asked if Le Scouarnec, 74, had also been abused by his own father, he said: “I think so, but he always told me he wasn’t.”

Things ‘unsaid’

Le Scouarnec is already in prison, after being found guilty in 2020 of abusing four children, including two of his nieces.

ALSO READ: Male nurse accused of rape and sexual assault of teenage boys

His youngest son, now 37 and an electrician, told the court he remembered growing up in a “normal family” but in which some things were left “unsaid”.

“I have very good memories of my father,” he added, saying this explained why he cut off all contact later. “I wanted to keep that image of him,” he said, adding he did not think he himself had ever been abused by his father.

But with his father looking on from the accused bench, he said he had become “a little paranoid” in the light of subsequent revelations, telling the court: “I never leave my son unaccompanied.”

Le Scouarnec took the stand Monday on the opening day of the trial, admitting he had done “hideous things”.

A government-created commission tasked with protecting child victims of sexual abuse, called the Ciivise, has said the first allegations that Le Scouarnec abused children within his own family should have been “immediately reported” to prevent further harm.

Le Scouarnec in his diaries wrote in 1996: “SHE knows I am a paedophile,” an apparent reference to his wife, who appeared in court on Tuesday, but is only due to testify on Wednesday.

ALSO READ: Gauteng Liquor Board suspends Zanzou nightclub’s operating licence

She arrived at court wearing a black hood, black gloves and a surgical mask that largely hid her from view.

In 2005, a court handed Le Scouarnec a four-month suspended sentence for owning sexually abusive images of children.

But his ex-wife has claimed she was in the dark.

Earlier this month she told regional newspaper Ouest France she had no idea about his “predilections”, and only discovered the truth after he was arrested in 2017.

“I asked myself how I could have completely missed it. It’s a terrible betrayal of me and my children,” she said.

Le Scouarnec meticulously documented his crimes, noting his victims’ names, ages and addresses and the nature of the abuse.

ALSO READ: Police investigate alleged abuse at Zanzou nightclub as protests erupt

The former surgeon practiced for decades right up until his retirement despite the 2005 conviction and colleagues sounding the alarm over his behaviour.

Investigators only discovered his diaries documenting years of abuse against patients after a six-year-old girl in 2017 accused him of rape.

Her case was included in the 2020 trial.

– By: © Agence France-Presse