Former surgeon accused of hundreds of pedophilia crimes is “calculating” and “unflappable”. Ex-wife recalls “normal” sex life
A sex life that was “normal” and without “special demands”. This is how the ex-wife of Joël Le Scouarnec — the 75-year-old man accused of sexually abusing 299 children in a hospital in France — described the couple’s intimacy.
Marie-France Le Scouarnec separated from her doctor several years ago and, this Tuesday, she testified in court on the second day of the trial of the biggest paedophilia case ever in the country. The accused who sits in the dock is the man she lived with for years and with whom she had three children. The woman revealed that their relationship “deteriorated in 1997”, because the surgeon saw her only “as a maid”. He said that she “cooked well and that she looked after the children well”, said the ex-wife, who recalled her husband’s constant absence due to work.
It was in the hospitals where the former surgeon is believed to have committed most of the crimes against children and young people. He would take advantage of the periods when the minors were still anesthetized, due to the medical procedures they were undergoing, to commit most of the abuses.
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In 2020, when the doctor was tried for the crimes of rape and sexual abuse of his two nieces, a neighbour and another girl he had contact with in the hospital, his ex-wife had already denied having any knowledge of her then-husband's paedophilic behaviour . She claims that she only found out what was going on when he was arrested in 2017, after searches of his home revealed that he had accumulated over 300,000 photographs of sexual abuse of minors and several notebooks with accounts of his acts over the years. By that time, the couple had been separated for a long time and this is the argument that Marie-France has used in recent years to defend that she did not cover up for her ex-husband.
A handwritten letter signed by Marie-France Le Scouarnec, sent to friends who were about to report the man seven years before the first complaint against her ex-husband, has now been made public, in which she asks the recipients to have “the kindness to protect” her son, the only one who did not know “his father’s past”.
In the witness box, in addition to the closest relatives of the former doctor accused of hundreds of pedophilia crimes, there was the expert who accompanied Le Scouarnec's first arrest when he was in the Saintes detention center (Charente-Maritime), at the end of 2018, and who drew up his psychological profile.
He recalled that the man he analyzed “never feels uncomfortable” and “does not show irritation”. “He always expresses himself briefly, spontaneously and with appropriate vocabulary”, he said, comparing his approach to psychological interviews to that of a “game of chess”.
The testimony of the former surgeon's youngest son, 37, began by sharing his state of mind. "I feel anger and a lot of negative emotions , but I am open to answering all possible questions," he said, quoted by France Info .
He described his father as “an intelligent man, a little cold, who was interested in many things”. He also said that he was “a little calculating” and that he had “a strong personality”. Despite this, his son described a “completely happy childhood” and even admitted that he would like to maintain the image he has of the man who raised him: “a present father who raised me and with whom I lived happy moments in my childhood.”
The 37-year-old man was asked directly whether he thought he may have suffered sexual abuse by his father, but he denied this possibility , stressing that he does not have any psychological marks of possible abuse.
“I have nothing to complain about in terms of [mental] problems or addictions,” replied the son of the main defendant, who says he has never even consulted a psychologist, before or after his father’s acts were revealed. “I think that, at some point, yes, I will consult someone,” he said, referring to the pressure he feels due to the extensive media coverage of the case.
The same son, who was not identified in court, also answered the question that many ask. How did he not know about his father's conviction in 2005 for viewing child pornography? “Apart from being protected, I don't really know what the reason could have been,” he replied, guaranteeing that hiding this fact ended up not only not protecting him but also harming him.
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