Paedophile surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec admits abusing patients for decades

This court sketch shows retired French surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec speaking during his trial on charges of assaulting or raping 299 patients, at the Criminal Court in Vannes. Image / AFP

• Joel Le Scouarnec, a former surgeon, admitted to abusing children while working at hospitals from 1989 to 2014.
• Le Scouarnec documented his assaults in diaries and was previously convicted in 2020 for abusing four children.
• Despite past warnings and a 2005 conviction for possessing abusive images, he practised until 2017.

French paedophile surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec said today that he had two distinct personalities; as both “a good surgeon” and a “pervert” who had no qualms about what he did to his patients, most of whom were minors.

Le Scouarnec, 74, has been on trial in the western city of Vannes since last week in one of France’s largest child sex abuse cases.

The majority 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 check-ups at a dozen hospitals between 1989 and 2014.

“My paedophile activity was one thing and my professional activity was another, and this paedophile activity had no impact on my professional activity,” he said in court.

“For some people, it’s incomprehensible.”

The father of three admitted taking advantage of his position “to abuse children”.

Speaking in an even voice, he also recounted that he would look at child pornography during lunch breaks in his office, which might have had “harmful consequences” on his work.

The French lawyers of retired surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec, Thibaut Kurzawa (left) and Maxime Tessier talk to the press at the courthouse on the sidelines of Le Scouarnec's trial. Photo / AFP

“I am entirely responsible for what I have done,” Le Scouarnec said.

On Monday, Scouarnec said that being a paedophile did not prevent him from being a good father.

He admitted that he had “fantasised” about his three sons but insisted he had never acted on those fantasies.

His middle son, 42, told the court last week that he had been raped and sexually abused by his grandfather, Le Scouarnec’s father, from the age of 5 to 10 years old.

Le Scouarnec meticulously documented the sexual assaults, noting his victims' names, ages and addresses and the nature of the abuse.

Yesterday, he described his diaries as “sordid” and “vulgar”.

The former surgeon “is someone who has moved on, who has put his actions into words, who has a position that has evolved considerably”, his lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, said yesterday.

The former surgeon is already in jail, having been found guilty in 2020 of abusing four children, including two of his nieces.

Under French law, rape is “any act of sexual penetration, of whatever nature, or any oral-genital act committed on another person or on the person of the perpetrator through violence, coercion, threat or surprise”.

The surgeon was never investigated during his career, despite a 2005 sentence for possessing sexually abusive images of children and some of his colleagues sounding the alarm over suspicious behaviour.

He continued to practise until his retirement in 2017, after which a 6-year-old accused him of rape and police discovered diary accounts of abuse against his patients stored on his computers.

– Agence France-Presse