Andrew Harding
BBC Paris correspondent
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Protesters outside the Vannes courthouse were found to show support for the victims of Le Scouarnec
It was supposed to be a critical and catalytic moment for French society.
It’s scary, but you can’t miss it. It can be deactivated.
The seaside town of Banes, in southern Brittany, took the opportunity to carefully prepare a special venue and another overflow amphitheater.
Hundreds of journalists have been granted the process of dominating French headlines throughout a three-month period, forcing bystanders to confront crimes that are too often avoided.
Warning: Some of the details of this story are bothering me
It was compared to last year’s Pericot Mass Rape Trial in southern France and the massive global attention it earned, compared to last year’s Pericot Mass Rape Trial.
Instead, the trial of Joel Le Skaurneck, France’s most prolific pedophile, is a retired surgeon who admitted to rape or sexually assaulting 299 people, and almost all of their children are spreading this Wednesday.
“I’m tired. I’m angry. I don’t have much hope right now. Society seems totally indifferent. It’s scary to think [the rapes] Manon Lemoyne, 36, one of Le Skullneck’s victims, told the BBC.
Benoit Peyrucq/AFP
Le Scowlneck, a retired surgeon, has admitted almost 300 allegations of rape and abuse
Ms Lemoyne and about 50 other victims have been stabbed by an apparent lack of public interest in the trial, forming their own campaign group to put pressure on French authorities, accusing the government of ignoring the “landmark” incident in which the government exposed “the true lab of institutional failure.”
The group questioned why parliamentary committees have not been established, like in other well-known abuse cases, and said it felt “invisible” to “prevent the huge number of victims from being recognized.”
Some of the victims who initially chose to testify anonymously decided to make their identity public in public as they hope to shock France with more attention.
All crimes on which Le Scouarnec is on trial occurred between 1998 and 2014.
“It’s not normal to have to show your face. [But] I hope that what we’re doing now will change things. That’s why we decided to get up and hear our voices,” Ms Lemoyne said.
So, what didn’t work?
Was the fear too extreme, the subject was too prominently harsh, or was it simply too uncomfortable to contemplate?
Why did the whole world know the names of Dominique and Guiserre Pericot, but there are trials with the massive victims of victims – the victims of children who were abused under the nose of a French medical facility – pass by what felt more than a group trembling?
Miguel Medina/AFP
Gisèle Pelicot (C) has become a single recognizable person at the trial of her ex-husband
Why doesn’t the world know the name Joel Le Scaalnek?
“The Le Skullneck incident has not mobilized many people, probably due to the number of casualties. We hear the disappointment, the lack of widespread mobilization, which is what it’s sad.”
Some observers reflect the absence in this case of a single Tothemic figure, such as Gisèle Pelicot.
Others have come to more devastating conclusions.
“The problem is that this exam is about child sexual abuse.
This topic has globally virtual Omertà, but especially in France. “We simply don’t want to admit it,” Miriam Guedi Benayon, a lawyer representing some of Le Skaurneck’s victims, told me.
During her closing discussion to the court, Guedj-Benayoun condemned what was called France’s “systematic, organized silence” on child abuse.
She spoke of patriarchal society in which men in a respected position like medicine remained beyond the blame and pointed out that “the silence of those who knew, the opposite, the person who saw and the person who had, should raise vigilance.”
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Myriam Guedj-Benayoun (L) spoke about French code of silence on child abuse (File photo)
The deserts exposed during the trial are surprising, with many people getting too much in their stomachs.
The Vannes court hears carefully and in detail how 74-year-old Le Scouarnec is covered in pedophilia, and each child’s rape will be carefully detailed in a series of black notebooks, and acquire vulnerable young patients while recovering from anesthetics and surgery.
The court is also known for the growing isolation of a retired surgeon and what his own lawyer described as “a descent into hell” last decade before he was caught after abused his neighbor’s six-year-old daughter.
Finally, alone in a dirty house, banished for heavy drinking by many of his relatives, Le Scowlneck spent much of his time looking at violent images of child rape online and became engrossed in a collection of lively, child-sized dolls.
“I was emotionally attached to them… They did what I wanted,” Le Skaurneck told the court in his quiet monotony.
Damien Meyer/AFP
Joel Le Scouarnec (leave the car) will definitely face the rest of his life in prison
A few blocks from the courthouse, in the adapted Civic Hall, journalists have seen the case unfold on television screens. Recently, seats have begun to fill up, and it has increased as trial coverage approaches.
Many commentators point to how, like the Pericot case, Le Skullneck’s trial exposed a deep institutional failure that allowed surgeons to continue raping after they were detected and stopped.
Dominic Pericot was caught “upskirting” in a supermarket in 2010, and his DNA quickly linked to an attempted rape in 1999.
In the trial of Le Scouarnec, numerous healthcare professionals explained how over the years the over-promoted rural healthcare system has chosen, in some cases, embarrassing, others, selfishly.
“I was advised not to talk about such people or such people,” said one doctor who tried to sound the alarm.
“There is a shortage of surgeons and those who appear are welcomed like messiahs,” the hospital director explained.
“I’ve been messed up, I’ll admit it like an entire hierarchy,” another admin finally admitted.
Another connection between the Pelicot and Le Scouarnec cases reveals (or lack of understanding) of trauma.
Without warning or assistance, Gisèle Pelicot was suddenly faced with police with video evidence of her own drug and rape.
Later, during the trial, some defense attorneys and other commentators tried to minimize her suffering by pointing out the fact that she was unconscious during the rape.
In the case of Le Skullneck, French police seem to have searched for many pedophiles in a similarly rough manner, summoning people for interviews of unknown cause, informing them that they were listed in the surgeon’s notebook.
Many of the Le Scouarnec victims responded very differently. Some chose to simply not involve trials or to experience childhood without memory.
For others, the news of abuse had a deep impact on them.
“You’re in my head, it’s destroying me. I’ve become another person – I don’t recognize,” the victim addressed Le Skullneck in court.
“I have no memories and I’m already damaged,” another said.
“It turned me over,” the officer admitted.
And there is another group of people who have discovered that unlike Gisèle Pelicot, their knowledge of abuse is revelation and that they can understand what they had not previously understood themselves or their own life.
Some people have linked childhood abuse to general misfortunes, or poor behavior, or life failures.
For others, links are more specific and can help explain a series of mystical symptoms and behaviors, from fear of intimacy to repeated genital infections and eating disorders.
“Every time we have sex with my boyfriend, I vomit,” one woman revealed in court.
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Amélie Lévêque-Merle was run in 1991 and has since feared hospitals
“I had so many aftereffects from my surgery, but no one could explain why I had this irrational fear of the hospital,” said Amélie, another victim.
Some have described the trial itself as being like a group therapy session, with the victims bonding to a shared trauma that they previously believed they were suffering alone.
“This trial is like a clinical laboratory involving 300 victims. I sincerely hope that France will change. Either way, it will change the victim’s perception of trauma and traumatic memories,” said lawyer Guedj-Benayoun.
Despite concerns about the lack of public interest, Manon Lemoyne said the trial “helped the victims rebuild themselves and turn the pages. We laid out the pain and experiences and left them behind. [in the courtroom]. So for me, it was really free. ”
After confessing his crime, Le Skaurneck is inevitably convicted and will almost certainly remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Two of his victims took their lives a few years before trial – the fact that he admitted in court with the same repentant but quintessential apology offered to all others.
Meanwhile, some activists hope that the incident will prove to be a turning point in French society.
“Compared to Pericot’s trial… we see that we don’t talk much about the Le Skullneck case. We need to unite, otherwise nothing has to happen. The Le Skullneck trial was not a victim of the child as well.
A more careful evaluation came from the lawyer, Ms. Guedj-Benayoun.
“Now there is a very important conflict between those who want to condemn sexual violence in children and those who want to hide it. This standoff is taking place today in this trial. Who will win?” she wondered.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this story, information and support can be found on the BBC action line.
