On February 24, French surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec will go on trial for raping and abusing hundreds of young patients in France's biggest ever child sex abuse case. France is still reeling from the shock of the Dominique Pelicot case, in which he and fifty other men were convicted of raping his wife. - REUTERS
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00:00When police searched Surgeon Joël Lescouanec's home after he raped his six-year-old neighbor
00:06in 2017, they found a cache of sex dolls, wigs and child pornography, and electronic
00:12diaries that appeared to detail nearly three decades of rapes and sexual assaults on hundreds
00:18of young patients in hospitals across Western France.
00:22Lescouanec was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2020 for the rape and sexual assault of
00:27his child neighbor, his two nieces and a four-year-old patient.
00:31But the investigation of his files continued, and the 74-year-old will again face trial
00:36on February 24 in Vannes, Brittany.
00:40It will be France's largest ever child sexual abuse case.
00:43Lescouanec is charged with the aggravated rape and sexual assault of 299 people, many
00:49of them children.
00:51Matisse-Vinay was 10 in 2007, when his father and grandfather drove him to the hospital
00:57with stomach pain.
00:58The grandfather, Roland-Vinay, thought nothing of the surgeon's order that Matisse spend
01:02the night there alone.
01:05In his diary, Lescouanec records sexually assaulting a little boy that day and the following
01:10one, according to a court document.
01:14We had no idea of what had happened, and he himself didn't talk about it.
01:20He could have said he thought it was normal for the doctor to examine him like that, a
01:2410-year-old kid.
01:28Matisse was never the same, and fell into a life of alcohol and drugs, the Vinays say.
01:33He died of an overdose, aged 24, in 2021, three years after learning from the police
01:39about the abuse he'd allegedly suffered.
01:41Reuters couldn't establish the role the surgeon's alleged actions played in Matisse's death.
01:47Roland and his wife Morissette believe he took his own life.
01:51There's no other word for it.
01:53He killed him.
01:54He didn't take a revolver to kill him, but he killed him, like he killed all his victims.
02:00Because they're not dead, they're still there, but there's a part of them that's completely
02:05dead.
02:06The trial comes at a time of reckoning over sex crimes in France.
02:12Dominique Pellicot was found guilty in December of drugging his wife Giselle and inviting
02:17men to rape her.
02:18Fifty other men were accused of rape.
02:20Le Squarnec was convicted over child pornography in 2005, but continued to work in public hospitals
02:26until his arrest in 2017, raising tough questions for France's publicly funded health system.
02:33François was 12 when Le Squarnec allegedly abused him.
02:41I realised that I should not have been operated on by this surgeon, that ultimately the protections,
02:47the safeguards were not activated or were not activated in time, and that the warnings
02:51were not listened to.
02:53So yes, I feel betrayed by the authorities.
02:57Investigators tracked down potential victims by matching diary descriptions with hospital
03:01records.
03:03Many of the anaesthetised patients had no recollection of the alleged abuse, but psychiatrists
03:08documented symptoms of post-traumatic stress in victims, according to court documents.
03:14François hopes the trial will shift the sense of shame from the victims to the accused.
03:23As soon as I left the hospital, I withdrew into myself.
03:26I distanced myself from my parents, from my loved ones.
03:32I cut all my social ties too.
03:34Today, as an adult, I am under an antidepressant treatment, very reinforced psychological monitoring.
03:42Prosecutor Seyla Squarnec has admitted to investigators many of the accusations he faces.
03:48His lawyers declined to comment ahead of the trial.