French court sentences pedophile surgeon to 20 years in jail for abusing hundreds of patients

A 74-year-old pedophile and former surgeon was given a maximum 20-year prison sentence on Wednesday by a French court for the sexual assault of hundreds of patients, mostly children, over more than two decades

Joël Le Scouarnec was sentenced after admitting raping and sexually assaulting 299 victims.

Judges followed the public prosecutor’s recommendations regarding the length of the sentence and the criminal court of Morbihan, in western France, ordered that Le Scouarnec should serve at least two-thirds of the sentence before he can be eligible for release.

Le Scouarnec is already serving a 15-year prison sentence, for a conviction in 2020 for the rape and sexual assault of four children, including two nieces. In French law, sentences run concurrently and Le Scouarnec should only serve the additional years after the first sentence is completed.

Solène Podevin Favre, president of an advocacy group for child victims of incest and other sexual crimes, expressed shock at a verdict “we might have expected to be less lenient,” lamenting that post-sentence preventive detention was not imposed.

“It’s the maximum sentence, certainly,” she said. “But it’s the least we could have hoped for. Yet in six years, he could potentially be released. It’s staggering.”
The new trial began in February and laid bare a pattern of abuse between 1989 and 2014. Most of the victims were unconscious or sedated hospital patients at the time of the assaults. The average age was 11. Among the victims were 158 boys and 141 girls.

Le Scouarnec has confessed to all the sexual abuse alleged by the 299 civil parties, as well as to other assaults that are now beyond the statute of limitations. In a shocking admission during the trial, he also acknowledged sexually abusing his granddaughter — a statement made in front of her visibly distraught parents.