This story contains disastrous details from the beginning
Joel Le Skourneck, a former surgeon at a trial in France who admitted to sexually abuse hundreds of patients, primarily under the age of age, said he considers him “responsible” for the deaths of two of his victims.
Over the past few weeks, the court was shown photographs of two people who say their relatives died of suicide following the trauma of being sexually assaulted by Le Skaurneck as children.
One is not named. The other is Mathias Vinett, who passed away in 2021 after suffering from addiction. His grandparents told the BBC they would blame Le Skaurneck for his death.
“I retain the memories of these two photos, [shown] Towards the end, during the last exam, “They’re dead and I’m responsible.”
Le Scaurnek, 74, was questioned in the courtroom of Vaness in Brittany during the penultimate week of the long, tough trial that began in late February.
During a session held behind closed doors in March, Le Skaurneck was a respected small town surgeon – admitting to sexually abuse all 299 victims.
His lawyer, Maxim Tessier, said that many people mentioned in his diary had asked Le Skaurneck if he admitted that he was “a potential victim of all his actions and he said yes.”
At the start of the trial, Le Skaurneck told the court that he “hard, understood and shared the sleazy behaviour” caused by many of his patients.
Police were able to identify hundreds of casualties thanks to meticulous diary documenting the attacks he carried out with graphic details.
Many people had no memories of the abuse they allegedly lasted, and they had to say from the police that their names appeared in Le Skaulneck’s diary.
For hundreds of hours in the process of the trial, Le Skaurneck has faced his victims and their relatives.
Many of them became emotional as they explained how the abuse they endured shaped their lives. Some said they suffer from eating disorders, anxiety, depression and addiction.
“You got into my mind and it destroyed me, I’ve become another person who no longer recognizes,” the Le Monde newspaper reported that one victim was saying.
One of the few victims who had memories of abuse said they were supported by Le Skaurneck’s hands. When police contacted her and said her name had appeared in the former surgeon’s diary, she said she was relieved.
“I’ve been waiting for your phone for 30 years,” she said.
The newspaper also told the story of another victim who had no recollection of the abuse, but she still said she was “confident” of being raped. “I wanted to die without even knowing why. He stole my youth,” she told the court.
Throughout the trial, Le Skaurneck apologised to his victims and admitted that his actions were often “rebellious.”
Romanee Kodou, a lawyer representing several victims, told French media that his recognition of guilt “caves the victims” and “allows them to close the doors to the terrible debate that was at the mercy of Joel Le Skaurneck.”
The trial section focused on cross-examination of medical professionals who worked in the same facility as Le Scouarnec.
The victim’s lawyers and child protection advocacy groups said that “institutional failures” allowed surgeons to continue working with their children even after an FBI alert issued in the early 2000s warned French authorities that Le Skaurneck was accessing a child abuse website.
The doctor’s National Order (CNOM), which also filed a lawsuit against Le Scouranec, said in March that he “expressed deep regret” as it was supposed to be “hindering practice.”
“This situation emphasizes poor communication between the various entities in the doctor’s order, and I deeply regret this,” they said in a statement.
Despite being the biggest child abuse trial in French history, many victims feel the lawsuit is relatively unattended in France.
The victims of the Joel Le Scouarnec Collective Group said it was “unstable” to see how the trial failed to attract the attention of politicians and society as a whole.
“We will never have lessons from the medical world or politicians,” the group said in a statement.
Le Scouarnec has already been put in prison after being sentenced to rape and sexually assaulting four children, including his two children, in December 2020. Now he faces another 20 years in prison.
A verdict is expected on May 28th.
