French surgeon jailed after sexually abusing children under anaesthesia

A former surgeon who sexually abused hundreds of children in France has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, was found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting 299 children in one of France's largest-ever child sex abuse cases. Most of the victims were abused while under anaesthesia or waking up from operations, with an almost equal number of boys and girls.

Two victims took their own lives years before the trial. He was accused of 300 separate offences - 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults - in more than a dozen hospitals between 1989 and 2014.

Le Scouarnec is already serving a 15-year prison sentence for a 2020 conviction for the rape and sexual assault of four children. During the trial in Morbihan, in western France, prosecutors described Le Scouarnec as "a devil in a white coat" and requested the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

"I'm aware that the harm I've caused is beyond repair," Le Scouarnec said at the opening of the trial in February. "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." The court ordered Le Scouarnec should serve at least two-thirds of the sentence before he can be eligible for release.

Presiding Judge Aude Buresi said Le Scouarnec had preyed on victims when they were at their most vulnerable. "Your acts were a blind spot in the medical world, to the extent that your colleagues, the medical authorities, were incapable of stopping your actions," the judge told Le Scouarnec.

Read more:A monster who lived among us - and got away with itHow did surgeon carry out abuse unchecked for decades? Le Scouarnec had confessed to all the sexual abuse, as well as to other assaults that are now beyond the statute of limitations. He kept detailed records of the abuse he inflicted in notebooks and diaries and some only became aware they had been abused when contacted by investigators after their names appeared in his journals.

Others only realised they had been admitted to hospital at the time by checking their medical journals. "I didn't see them as people," Le Scouarnec told the court during the trial.

"They were the destination of my fantasies. As the trial went on, I began to see them as individuals, with emotions, anger, suffering and distress." Le Scouarnec was never investigated during his career, despite being sentenced in 2005 for owning child sexual abuse images.

He was only apprehended after he retired in 2017 when a girl told her mother that Le Scouarnec had sexually abused her while she was playing in the garden of her home. When the police searched Le Scouarnec's house they found 300,000 indecent photos and videos of children, 70 child-sized dolls and hundreds of notebooks and diaries detailing his acts of abuse.

Dozens of victims and rights campaigners gathered outside the courthouse in Brittany ahead of the verdict, with a banner made of hundreds of pieces of white paper with black silhouettes - one for each victim. Some papers featured a first name and age, while others referred to the victim as "Anonymous".

The local prosecutor has opened a separate investigation to determine if there was any criminal liability by agencies or individuals who could have prevented the abuse. A group of victims said in a statement before the verdict: "This trial, which could have served as an open-air laboratory to expose the serious failings of our institutions, seems to leave no mark on the government, the medical community, or society at large.".