Confessions of rapist surgeon shock France: pedophilia, zoophilia and incest
The 74-year-old retired doctor admits to continued assaults on patients, most of whom were minors
ParisSentenced in 2020 to 15 years in prison for raping two nieces and a 6-year-old neighbour, Joël Le Scouarnec has little to lose. Whether he is convicted or not in the trial in France for allegedly raping or sexually abusing 300 patients over nearly three decades, the retired surgeon will spend much of his remaining life in prison. Perhaps that is why Le Scouarnec has taken advantage of his questioning this week at the trial to admit everything, to shamelessly explain all his sexual deviations without sparing any detail. His revelations have caused an enormous impact among the victims and the public following the trial.
"I did not put any brakes on all these practices," admitted the accused when he was questioned about his pedophilia. The president of the court then projected images found on his computer in the courtroom with minors as protagonists. Some victims, horrified, covered their faces or looked away. Just as happened with the trial that convicted Dominique Pelicot for having drugged his wife so that a hundred men could rape her, in the trial against Le Scouarnec, photographs and videos incriminating the accused are also shown to the victims and the public – all of whom are in adjacent rooms due to space constraints.
Joël Le Scouarnec is accused of having raped his patients, most of whom were minors at the time of the events, taking advantage of his job as a surgeon. He raped some of them in the operating theatre or in the recovery room, while they were still under the effects of anaesthesia. He raped others during medical examinations in hospital. He took advantage, as he admitted at the trial, when the minors were alone in the room. The police arrested him after finding personal diaries hidden in a cupboard at his home in which he described the sexual assaults with all the details, including the names, ages and addresses of the children.
Mute the details
During the investigation, before the police and the judge, the surgeon had denied the rapes. At the trial, which will last until June, he admits everything. Some French media choose not to disclose the details of his statements, they are so raw. "We prefer to keep quiet about the details according to our statutes," explains the regional daily. West France, who is closely following the trial, which is taking place in Vannes (Brittany).
During the statement, the accused was questioned about his sexual practices, which range from paedophilia to zoophilia and violence. Of the 51,000 photographs that the police found on his computer, there were 8,000 documents of zoophilia and 5,000 of violent sexual acts. "I was constantly transgressing. I did not prohibit myself from anything. That is what made me interested in zoophilia. First through images, then through actions carried out by myself," he said.
Violating the cleanliness
At another point in the trial, while one of his sons was testifying, the retired surgeon asked to speak to confess that he had raped his daughter, who was not married to the accused, when she was two years old. Le Scouarnec's son and his wife, who were also present in the courtroom, suffered a shock and had to be treated by psychologists. In his personal diaries, the accused had written fantasies about his granddaughter, but the confession took the parents of the girl, who is now 12 years old, by surprise.
The trial is not easy for the victims, who began to testify on Thursday. Nor for the police investigators. This became clear last week with a police officer from the Gendarmerie who was part of the team of investigators in charge of reading the surgeon's personal diaries. During her testimony by videoconference, she broke down. With tears in her eyes she recalled the moment when they began to explore the computer files and read the thousands of pages of the notebooks. "It was a shock," she said.
Another gendarme explained that at the beginning of the investigation, when they read the personal diaries of the accused and realized that many of the victims assaulted, raped and abused had suffered the crimes while they were unconscious or when they were very young, they raised an "ethical debate" could it cause trauma? Or was it better not to tell them anything? In the end they decided to talk to all of them and explained the facts to them.
