29-05-2025
Victims of pedophile surgeon Le Scouarnec express anger and fear after trial's verdict: 'Our voices must go beyond the courtroom, or we will be forgotten'
Everything seemed set in stone before the criminal court in Vannes, Brittany. From the very first day of the hearing, on February 24, it was understood that Joël Le Scouarnec would receive a 20-year prison sentence, the maximum under French law, for the sexual assaults and rapes committed on 299 victims, most of them underage at the time. He himself had already accepted the verdict, acknowledging all the facts, including those that were time-barred, and repeating from the dock: "I am the only one responsible. I am not asking the court for leniency."
On Wednesday, May 28, three months later, he was, as expected, sentenced to 20 years in prison, with a period of ineligibility for parole set at two-thirds of his sentence and a strict 15-year judicial supervision. But when it comes to justice, emotions often come into play and feelings can overflow. As predictable as it was, the verdict nonetheless released an outburst of frustration, on the last day of what had until then been a relatively calm trial.
As she finished reading the sentence, Aude Buresi, the presiding judge, explained that the five judges had not applied preventive detention, one of the additional measures requested by the prosecutor, Stéphane Kellenberger. The rare and controversial measure allows a convicted person to be kept in a secure medical-judicial center after serving their sentence, based on vague criteria such as "dangerousness" and a "high risk of reoffending." It is like a sentence after the sentence.
