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, including two nieces.

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 it
How 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.

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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.”

There are so many aspects to the crimes of Joel Le Scouarnec that it can feel bewildering. Not just the volume of his offences, but also the failings that allowed him to get away with such horrendous abuse for so long.

A monster who lived among us, and got away with it.

There are the questions about whether French society puts some people on such a lofty pedestal they become beyond reproach.

The way in which police treat victims, and the support those people get – or don’t get – when they come to terms with offences that happened to them, and often changed their lives.

But perhaps the most troubling side of this whole trial has been the relative indifference that has greeted it.

You might imagine Le Scouarnec’s crimes would lead to a searing national debate, a public inquiry and government soul-searching.

That, after all, is what happened following the trial of Dominique Pelicot who was found guilty of inviting dozens of men to rape or sexually abuse his wife Gisele over the course of a decade.

She, like many of Le Scouarnec’s victims, was unaware of what had happened to her – Gisele was drugged; Le Scouarnec preyed on children still recovering from anaesthetic.

In the Pelicot case, there was one victim and dozens of perpetrators. Le Scouarnec is the reverse – one man who attacked hundreds of people.

And yet the reception has been so different. Pelicot’s case was followed around the world, and its verdict echoed through French society. Le Scouarnec’s victims have complained about being ignored and forgotten.

Read more:
How did surgeon carry out abuse unchecked for decades?

So what’s happened? Perhaps Le Scouarnec’s crimes are simply too horrendous – maybe we find his level of child abuse simply too dreadful to confront and instead turn away.

Possibly there is the argument that child abuse is a crime with which we are all too familiar, whereas the actions of Dominique Pelicot – drugging his own wife to allow strangers to rape her – were something horrendously new.

And then there is Gisele Pelicot – a totemic character who chose to reveal her identity and to own, and so mould, the story of what happened to her. For many, she is a heroic figure – a sign of hope amid the horror.

In the case of Le Scouarnec, there is very little sign of redemption. Everything seems bleak.

Or is it simply that the French establishment does not want to accept the crimes of Le Scouarnec were enabled by terrible mistakes – that opportunities to stop him were repeatedly missed.

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Whatever the reasons, far, far too many of Le Scouarnec’s victims feel as if they have been left behind and forgotten; that their nation is ignoring their suffering. And that, if nothing else, should give France reason to pause and to think.

Hamas’s Gaza chief Mohammed Sinwar has been “eliminated”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said – but Israeli military sources say they are not yet able to confirm the death.

Sinwar was one of Israel’s most wanted and the younger brother of the militant group’s former leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in a gun battle with Israeli troops last year.

Speaking to parliament on Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu included Mohammed Sinwar in a list of Hamas leaders killed in Israeli strikes. Later, IDF sources aid they were not yet able to confirm the death.

He had been the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza earlier this month and Mr Netanyahu
said on 21 May that it was was likely he had been killed.

Hamas has not yet confirmed the death of its leader.

“In the last two days we have been in a dramatic turn towards a complete defeat of Hamas,” the Israeli leader told the Knesset.

The development comes after one person was killed and 48 others injured after a crowd overwhelmed an aid hub in Gaza, according to local health officials.

Mr Netanyahu also spoke about how Israel was “taking control of food distribution”, a reference to a new aid distribution system that has been criticised and boycotted by humanitarian groups and the UN.

Analysis: Killing of Mohammed Sinwar still significant

While not as significant as the killing of Yahya Sinwar who masterminded the October 2023 attacks on Israel, the death of Mohammed Sinwar would still be notable, Sky News Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall says.

“He was a successor as a leader of Hamas, and the Israeli military has successfully eliminated most of Hamas’s senior military leadership, one by one,” he said.

“This would be another step towards decapitating his command structure.

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