Joel Le Scouarnec didn't ask the court for leniency in his final statement, nor did he get it: The former French surgeon was sentenced on Wednesday to 20 years in prison for raping and sexually assaulting 299 patients, mostly children, over a 25-year period. Most were sedated or unconscious, and the average age was 11. That term is the maximum the 74-year-old could be sentenced to under French law; the state prosecutor pointed out that had he been in a US court, where the law permits for sentences to be layered, he could have received 2,000 years.
The AP reports Le Scouarnec is already serving a 15-year prison sentence in connection with his 2020 conviction for the rape and sexual assault of four children. The Guardian has blunt lines from court:
- From Le Scouarnec: "I was a surgeon who benefited from my status to attack children, I don't deny that."
- From his lawyer: "He is utterly guilty."
- From the state prosecutor: "You were the devil, and sometimes the devil is dressed in a white coat."
The Guardian adds this line from a 36-year-old victim, who was 11 when she was raped: "They're trying to make him out to be a monster, but this monster is the society that created him and allowed him to continue." It's a reference to the fact that Le Scouarnec was in 2005 convicted of possessing child abuse images and yet managed to work in hospitals around children through his 2017 retirement. The AP has one wrenching detail from the trial: Le Scouarnec admitted he sexually abused his own granddaughter, "a statement made in front of her visibly distraught parents." (The victims' names were written in "black books.")
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