Joël Le Scouarnec

Joël Le Scouarnec (born 3 December 1950^[1][2]) is a retired French surgeon, sex offender and paedophile. He was convicted in a case of child pornography in 2004, and then of rape and sexual assaults of four children in 2020. For his second case, he was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. His case in 2025 has been recognised as the largest child sexual abuse trial in France involving at least 299 victims^[3][4] and around 30 hospitals,^[5] spanning 25 years.^[6] On his first day of trial at a court in Vannes, he confessed that he had "committed despicable acts" and caused "wounds [which] are indelible, beyond repair."^[7][8]

Joël Le Scouarnec
Born	(1950-12-03) 3 December 1950 (age 74) Paris, France
Occupation	Surgeon
Years active	1983–2017
Spouse	Marie-France (div. 2023)
Children	3
Criminal charge	Aggravated rape, child abuse, sexual assault, child pornography
Details
Victims	299 (300+ accused, see text)
Span of crimes	1989–2014
Country	France
Date apprehended	2 May 2017

Le Scouarnec's acts covered 1989 to 2014 while working at various hospitals, and most of his victims were his patients, and most under 15 years of age. The average age of his victims is 11,^[5] the youngest being one and the oldest 70.^[9] He had maintained notebooks in which he meticulously recorded several events. It was from this document that some of his victims learned they were raped several decades ago while incapacitated in hospitals. His victims could have been around 400, but many were unidentified and several cases were disqualified by the French law.^[10]

Early life and career

Le Scouarnec was born in Paris. He studied medicine at the University of Nantes, graduating in 1981. He continued a specialisation course in visceral and digestive surgery, completing it in 1983.^[1] (A source mentioning 1985 as the graduation year is unlikely.^[11]) That year, he moved to Indre-et-Loire to work at the La Fontaine de Loches clinic.^[1] In 1994, he was worked at Sacré-Coeur polyclinic, a private hospital at Vannes. For the next ten years, he was employed at different hospitals in Brittany.^[12] In 2004, he moved to Lorient to join the public hospital following appointment through government service. The next year, he received an appointment at a public hospital in Quimperlé.^[13][14] In 2008, he joined the Jonzac hospital in Charente-Maritime,^[1] where he worked until his retirement in 2017.^[6]

Personal life

Le Scouarnec met Marie-France, a health worker, while studying in Nantes in 1974.^[9] They married in 1983^[12] and had three children.^[11] After Le Scouarnec's scandal and imprisonment, they divorced in 2023.^[9]

Sexual abuse had been in the Le Scouarnec family. Le Scouarnec's eldest son admitted that his grandfather had repeatedly raped and abuse him between age five and ten.^[15] He also suspected that his grandfather also used to abuse his father.^[16]

First case

Le Scouarnec's first criminal record involved child pornography while he worked in Lorient hospital. In 2004, while FBI investigated clients of child pornographic sites on internet, and Le Scouarnec was identified in the list. Le Scouarnec's bank account was used for accessing a Russian child sexual abuse site.^[10] The FBI informed the French police, who search his home for physical evidence but found none. In a police interrogation, he nonetheless confessed to having access to the porn sites.^[17] On 17 November 2005, he was convicted of participating in child pornography and was given a four-month suspended sentence,^[1] by which he evaded imprisonment. He eventually got a job in Quimperlé where he committed his most gruesome crimes.^[17]

Second case

The first sexual assault and pedophilia case of Le Scouarnec emerged when his neighbours in Jonzac filed a case concerning their six-year-old daughter. In 2017, the girl related to her parents that their neighbour, "the man with a crown of white hair" showed her his private parts and touched her inappropriately through their backyard fence.^[10] After a week of investigation, Le Scouarnec was arrested on 2 May 2017. During his trial, other criminal evidence were brought up in the case, one involving a four-year-old patient allegedly raped in 1993 and another involving two of his four-year-old nieces that happened in 1989 and 1999.^[18] His trial opened on 25 March 2019.^[1] He was convicted by the Saintes court (Tribunal judiciaire de Saintes) of rape and sexual assault of the four minors on 3 December 2020 and was sentenced to 15-year imprisonment.^[19]

In an out-of-case account, Le Scouarnec's sister-in-law also recalled that Le Scouarnec seemed to have touched her five-year-old daughter around the time he committed the crimes. She informed her husband but they were uncertain of the real intention and did not report to the police.^[17]

Third case

While in prison, Le Scouarnec's property and records were further investigated by the police resulting in the discovery of a much more wider acts of crimes. Le Scouarnec had a meticulous habit of recording many of his acts, and most of them without the victims' awareness as they happened mostly while they were incapacitated or anaesthetised. His journals contain intimate and explicit descriptions of his acts,^[20] specifying 312 individuals.^[19] Laureline Peyrefitte, chief prosecutor of Lorient, reported that all traceable evidence indicated the total number of victims is 349.^[21] In his computer, police found over 300,000 pictures and videos related to child pornography and sexual abuse. The police also discovered a huge collection of sex toys ranging from small toys to life-sized (specifically 70 child-sized, according to CNN^[6]) sex dolls hidden under the floorboards.^[18] The case was filed on 15 October 2020.^[1]

The journal

Most of his victims knew they were raped or assaulted only when the police identified them from Le Scouarnec's notebooks and hospital records, and they were given the information of the events that took place several decades ago when they were only children. On one of the notes, Le Scouarnec wrote: "I am a paedophile and I always will be."^[18] He began writing his journal in 1990 and continued till 2016, just before his second criminal case was registered. His annual entry covered 40 to over 100 incidences.^[6] Most of his crimes (70% of them) were committed in the morning during post-operation medical checkups, and some in surgical rooms, while his victims lay unconscious under anaesthesia.^[10][16] Francesca Satta, a lawyer for some victims, told the BBC that there were few who knew they were raped, among them were two men who had committed suicide.^[20]

Trial

Le Scouarnec's trial was opened on 24 February 2025 at the Morbihan council court (Conseil Départemental de l'Accès au Droit du Morbihan) in Vannes.^[1][16] He was charged with 300 acts of aggravated rape and sexual assault on 299 people that occurred between 1989 and 2014. His victims were 158 males and 141 females, most of who were minors with an average age of 11;^[17] the oldest being 70 and the youngest, one.^[9] Many of the documented victims were not eligible in the court case as the French law restricts prosecution after the alleged rape victims had reached 30 years after adulthood. The court already dismissed about 80 individuals identified in Le Scouarnec's journal from the case.^[6] If all victims were identified, it is estimated that they could be about 400.^[10]

Responsibility of the medical council

The French Medical Council (Conseil de l'Ordre des Médecins), the regulatory body of French doctors and health system, was included in the court case, as it failed to check Le Scouarnec's crimes since it was first established. Following Le Scouarnec's criminal conviction in 2004, the prosecutors gave no warning to the medical authorities or hospital management, he easily managed to secure employment at Quimperlé hospital after he served the sentence.^[20] In 2006, Thierry Bonvalot, a colleague at Quimperlé hospital, filed an information to the hospital director after reading Le Scouarnec's criminal charges in the newspaper. The director submitted a warning information to the local authority,^[1] which voted that Le Scouarnec did not violate the medical codes.^[20] The prosecution profile was forwarded to the ministry of health (Le ministère Ministère de la Santé et de l'Accès Aux Soins) but nothing was heard from there. When Le Scouarnec got appointment at the Jonzac hospital in 2008, the hospital authority, which was properly informed, totally ignored the criminal records. According to Frédéric Benoist, lawyer for the child protection association (La Voix de l’Enfant), a civil party in the case, Le Scouarnec's continued criminal acts were due to failure of the authorities in spite of full awareness, and thus the reason for the medical council in the case. He said, "If these institutions [legal and medical authorities] had acted properly [in 2004], they could have stopped Le Scouarnec long before."^[10]