Latest news with #paedophile
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Dangerous paedophile, 45, who arranged with mother to rape her 12-year-old daughter is jailed for 20 years
An 'undoubtedly dangerous' paedophile who arranged with the mother of a 12-year-old girl how he would rape her daughter has received 20 years imprisonment. John Davies, 45, discussed in 'graphic detail' how he would carry out the sordid act, with the parent arranging for the sick sex offender to stay at her home for a week while her husband was away. Davies even spoke to the mother about the extent of sexual abuse that he planned to inflict on the young child, alongside discussing the clothes she would wear. The paedophile was also said to have sent the parent a photograph of his sex toy collection, explaining how he would use them to carry out the abuse. Now, Davies has been handed an extended 20-year-jail sentence, made up of 14-and-a-half years custody and five-and-a-half years extended licence. A registered sex offender, he was jailed in 2016 for offences including attempting to meet a child, following sexual grooming and attempted sexual activity with a child under 16. Davies also breached the Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) five times between 2022 and 2023. And, in April last year Davies informed his offender manager he had a second mobile phone at his address and he needed help. Police visited his home on April 27, 2024 and recovered the mobile phone from a kitchen cupboard. Following an analysis, it was found to have contained 132 indecent images of children at category A - the most serious, 35 at category B and 77 at category C. Prosecutor Josh Daley told Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court: 'The images showed young girls, aged six to nine, being raped and in pain. He used 15 instant messaging services and he used usernames without informing the police.' While the defendant engaged in a chat on Kik, it was unclear whether she was a child or not. However, the most serious charge involved Davies making arrangements with the woman in Birmingham to rape her 12-year-old daughter. Mr Daley said: 'He sent a picture of his sex toy collection and discussed how he would use gags, restraints and a collar. He said, 'It is a fantasy of mine. I want somebody to give me a chance'. He also sent a category A image of a child aged between seven and nine.' Davies pleaded guilty to arranging the commission of a child sex offence (rape of a child under 13); attempted sexual communication with a child; distributing a class A indecent image of a child; three charges of making indecent images of children; and three charges of breaching a SHPO. Judge Graeme Smith said that, in his view, Davies was an 'undoubtedly dangerous' man, having 'discussed at length in disgustingly graphic detail what you intended to do to the woman's 12-year-old daughter'. He also added that there was additional degradation and humiliation intended to the victim through the use of various sex toys. Paul Cliff, mitigating, said it was Davies' openness by telling his offender manager about the phone which led to the convictions. He added that no physical abuse took place on the girl.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Joel Le Scouarnec: Prolific French paedophile's sentence leaves victims appalled
The victims of prolific French paedophile Joel Le Scouarnec have expressed their dismay that the former surgeon's 20-year prison sentence does not include preventive detention - meaning he could be released from jail in the early 74-year-old was found guilty on Tuesday of sexually abusing hundreds of people, most of them underage patients of his, over decades. Over the course of the trial he had confessed to committing 111 rapes crimes and 188 sexual assaults, and was sentenced to the maximum of 20 years in jail. Prosecutors - who dubbed Le Scouarnec "a devil in a white coat" - had asked the court to take the extremely rare provision to hold him in a centre for treatment and supervision even after release, called preventative detention. But the judge rejected this demand, arguing Le Scouarnec's age and his "desire to make amends" had been taken into Scouarnec will have to serve two-thirds of his sentence before being eligible for parole. But because he has already served seven years due to a previous conviction for the rape and sexual assault of four children, he may be eligible for parole by lawyer, Maxime Tessier, pointed out that saying Le Scouarnec could be released then was "inaccurate", as parole is not tantamout a his victims - many of whom assiduously attended the three-month-long trial in Vannes, northern France - are lamenting the sentence. "For a robbery you risk 30 years. But the punishment for hundreds of child rapes is lighter?" one victim told Le Monde. The president of a child advocacy group, Solène Podevin Favre, said that she might have expected the verdict "to be less lenient" and to include a post-sentence preventative detention."It's the maximum sentence, certainly," she said. "But it's the least we could have hoped for. Yet in six years, he could potentially be released. It's staggering."Marie Grimaud, one of the lawyers representing the victims, told reporters that while she "intellectually" understood the verdict, "symbolically" she could not. Another lawyer, Francesca Satta, said that she felt 20 years was too short a time given the number of victims in the case. "It is time for the law to change so we can have more appropriate sentences," she in her judgement read out to the court, Judge Aude Burési said that, while the court had "heard perfectly the demands from the plaintiffs that Le Scouarnec should never be released from jail, it would be demagogic and fanciful to let them believe that would be possible"."In fact," she added, "the rule of law does not allow for that to happen."One of Le Scouarnec's victims, Amélie Lévêque, said the verdict had "shocked" her and that she would have liked preventative detention to be imposed. "How many victims would it take? A thousand?"She argued that French law needed to change and allow for harsher sentences to take into account the serial nature of crimes. Similar complaints were raised in the aftermath of the Pelicot trial last December, in which Dominique Pelicot was found guilty of drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, and recruited dozens of men to abuse her over almost a decade. Pelicot, too, was sentenced to 20 years - the maximum sentence for rape in French law - with the obligation to serve a minimum of two-thirds in case, however, will have to be re-examined at the end of the prison sentence before the question of preventative detention can be explored. In France, sentences are not served consecutively. Public prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger noted last week that had Le Scouarnec been on trial in the US - where people serve one prison sentence after another - he may have faced a sentence of over 4,000 years. But Cécile de Oliveira, one of the victims' lawyers, praised the sentence, which she said had been "finely tailored" to Le Scouarnec's "psychiatric condition". She agreed with the court's decision not to impose preventative detention on the former surgeon, adding: "It needs to remain an entirely exceptional punishment."After the verdict was read out, victims, journalists and lawyers mingled outside the courthouse in Vannes. Many of the civil parties and their relatives, angered by the verdict, brought their frustration to the media. "All that I ask for is that this man cannot offend again," the mother of a victim told French outlets. "If this kind of behaviour needs to entail a life sentence, so be it."
Malay Mail
3 days ago
- Health
- Malay Mail
Devil in a white coat: How French surgeon Le Scouarnec got away with 25 years of child sexual abuses
VANNES (France), May 29 — Joel Le Scouarnec practised medicine in France for decades as an outwardly respected surgeon while preying on victims to sexually abuse and rape them, often while under anaesthesia or waking up after operations. A court in western France on Wednesday convicted Le Scouarnec, 74, who during the trial confessed to sexually assaulting or raping 299 patients between 1989 and 2014 and is already in jail after a previous sexual abuse conviction. Le Scouarnec, one of the most prolific convicted sex predators in France's history, received the maximum 20-year sentence for aggravated rape demanded by prosecutors. The former surgeon, who said himself he deserves no 'leniency,' will be ineligible for parole until he has served two-thirds of his sentence. Throughout the trial, Le Scouarnec admitted to the crimes but repeated apologies in a monotone voice that led some to doubt his sincerity. And questions remain over how he was allowed to continue working despite a conviction for possessing images of child sexual abuse. His 42-year-old son told the court that his father's 'perversion exploded like an atomic bomb' within the family, shattering the carefully maintained facade of a devoted surgeon. Authorities found some 300,000 child sexual abuse images, along with diaries in which the surgeon meticulously recorded the sexual abuse of children and animals. Le Scouarnec, who wrote in his notes that he was 'very happy' to be a 'paedophile', admitted the abuse of his patients – 256 of them under 15 – but claims he remembers little of what he did. 'Dangerous nature' 'You were the devil and he sometimes is dressed in a white coat,' prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger told Le Scouarnec, warning an additional trial could be required to cover the cases of further victims whose abuse is not part of the current case. The former surgeon is already in prison after being sentenced in December 2020 to 15 years for raping and sexually assaulting four children, including two of his nieces. Victims and child rights advocates say the case highlights systemic failures that allowed Le Scouarnec to repeatedly commit sexual crimes. In 2005, he received a four-month suspended prison sentence after investigators linked his credit card to the online purchase of child sexual abuse material. But Le Scouarnec was neither required to undergo treatment nor barred from practising medicine. And even after a colleague at Quimperle hospital alerted local and regional medical authorities in 2006 to his conviction and 'dangerous nature', Le Scouarnec continued practising in hospitals across western France. In one instance, he told the then-director of the Jonzac hospital in western France about his 2005 conviction but she hired him nonetheless in 2008. Nearly a decade would pass before he once again came under suspicion. 'Good surgeon, pervert' Le Scouarnec said during the trial he had two distinct personalities: both 'a good surgeon', and a 'pervert' who had no qualms about what he did to his patients. The divide between those two sides began to unravel in 2017, when his neighbour in Jonzac filed a complaint for indecent exposure in front of her six-year-old daughter – who later accused Le Scouarnec of digital rape. After his arrest, Le Scouarnec told authorities he first 'touched' a child – his niece – between 1985 and 1986. Investigators found in 2000 one of his nieces told her mother that she had been raped by her uncle, who, when confronted, admitted the abuse but no complaint was filed. During the trial, he also admitted sexually abusing one of his granddaughters. Le Scouarnec said that his wife has known about the abuse since 1996, an allegation she denies. 'There's nothing to make me think this. Nothing, nothing, nothing... I never had any doubts,' Marie-France, who divorced Le Scouarnec in 2023, told the court. While Le Scouarnec insisted his expressions of regret towards the victims were genuine, many said they did not believe him and some expressed anger with the court's decision. The court rejected a rare request to place him in a treatment facility after his release, citing his age and 'desire to make amends.' One of the victims, Amelie Leveque, 43, expressed anger that the court stopped short of imposing that measure on Le Scouarnec. 'I feel humiliated by this verdict. There are 300 victims. Why not go all the way?,' she said. 'How many victims does it take, 1,000?' — AFP
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
The vile life of France's worst paedophile
A retired surgeon has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping or sexually assaulting 299 victims, almost all children, in France's largest-ever paedophile trial. Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, was found guilty of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults committed between 1989 and 2014 at a court in the seaside town of Vannes, southern Brittany. The average age of his victims was 11. During the trial, a packed court heard in excruciating detail how Le Scouarnec carefully recorded each child rape in a succession of black notebooks, often preying on his vulnerable young patients while they were under anaesthetic or recovering from surgery. It was also told of Le Scouarnec's growing isolation and 'descent into hell' – in the words of his own lawyer – in the years before his arrest in 2017 after abusing a neighbour's six-year-old daughter. The father-of-three ended up alone in a filthy house, drinking two bottles of whisky a day, watching violent images of child rape online and strutting around in a tutu surrounded by a collection of lifelike child-sized sex dolls. 'I was emotionally attached to them... They did what I wanted,' Le Scouarnec said in a quiet, detached voice. Two weeks into the trial, Le Scouarnec admitted all the charges against him and asked for 'no leniency', only the right to 'try to be a better person'. The prosecution had requested the maximum 20-year sentence for the ex-gastroenterologist, with prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger telling him: 'You were the devil and he sometimes is dressed in a white coat.' One prosecuting magistrate admitted the ruling might appear light compared to the US, where Le Scouarnec would risk '4,111 years' behind bars. And while victims expressed relief at the end of a horrific three-month process, simmering anger and frustration remained. A litany of failings by hospitals, health authorities and politicians allowed France's most 'prolific' paedophile to go unchecked for nearly 30 years, prompting accusations of 'white coat syndrome'. There has also been disappointment that what was supposed to be a 'trial of the century ' has failed to gain the global attention of last year's Pelicot case, in which Dominique Pelicot was jailed for recruiting strangers online to rape his wife. 'On the one hand, there's relief that it's over, because it's been a plunge into horror. For three months, we've been living inside the perversion of this man,' said Louis-Marie, 35, a psychiatric nurse raped by Le Scouarnec at the age of nine when the surgeon treated him for appendicitis. Louis-Marie, who only wanted to be identified by his first name, had no memory of the crime until police rang him during the investigation. 'I first of all thought it was a prank. I had blanked the entire thing out due to the trauma,' he told The Telegraph. Police knocked on the doors of scores of victims to inform them, out of the blue, that they'd been listed in the surgeon's notebooks. Some asked the police to stop reading about a childhood experience of which they had no memory. Others said it unleashed a mental earthquake. 'You've entered my head, it's destroying me. I've become a different person – one I don't recognise,' said a victim, addressing Le Scouarnec in court. Some said it helped to explain mystery symptoms and triggers. 'With my boyfriend, every time we have sex, I vomit,' one woman revealed in court. Amélie Lévêque-Merle, who was sexualled abused by Le Scouarnec in 1991, said: 'I had so many after-effects from my operation. But no-one could explain why I had this irrational fear of hospitals.' As the first victim to waive her anonymity, Ms Lévêque-Merle said she was inspired by Gisèle Pelicot's decision to appear publicly at her trial. 'We must get shame to change sides,' she said. 'I hope this will encourage others to do the same, because we can see that victims tend to protect themselves, and therefore hide. And I think that, like Ms Pelicot, we should not be ashamed.' Louis-Marie said the trial had helped heal the scars. 'The fact that each victim was able to take the stand, for many of us, has had a great restorative purpose. For me, in any case, it really lifted a weight off my shoulders.' But like many other victims, he has been furious at seeing a string of health professionals give evidence in the final stages of the trial only to 'pass the buck'. Louis-Marie said: 'There was only ever one guilty party, Le Scouarnec, but others bear responsibility. My goal was never for heads to roll, it was more for people to recognise a systemic dysfunction. Maybe I was naive. 'It's as if everyone's covering their tracks. It's like everyone's protecting themselves at the institutional level: 'It's not us, it's them' .There seems to be a desire to put a lid on it and move on.' One doctor who'd tried to sound the alarm said: 'I was advised not to talk about such-and-such a person.' 'There is a shortage of surgeons and those who show up are welcomed like the messiah,' explained a hospital director. 'I messed up, I admit it, like the whole hierarchy,' a different administrator finally conceded. Le Scouarnec was flagged by the FBI in 2004 for accessing child abuse images online while he was working in Lorient, a city in Brittany. A year later, a French court handed him a suspended four-month sentence and a €90 (£75) fine. 'The hearing lasted 40 minutes and the court didn't even ask him what his profession was and whether he was in contact with children every day,' said Marika Mathieu, the author of an investigative book about the case. By then, Le Scouarnec had already moved to a city 12 miles away in Quimperlé, where he was welcomed as much-needed medical assistance. Thierry Bonvalot, a psychiatrist who worked with Le Scouarnec, raised concerns in 2006 after learning of his conviction. He wrote to the Order of Physicians, which regulates France's medical profession, questioning Le Scouarnec's ability 'to remain completely calm when treating young children' in view of his 'legal past'. The Order summoned Le Scouarnec for a short meeting but took no action after he fobbed them off with 'marital' problems. 'The council decided unanimously that possessing criminal child porn posed no professional problem,' said Ms Mathieu. 'The hot potato then went through six or seven different services and nothing was done.' A report questioning Le Scouarnec's moral fitness to practise medicine reached the health ministry in 2007 and again, nothing was done. Instead, the hospital promoted Le Scouarnec to head of surgery, with the director describing him as a 'serious and competent' doctor with 'excellent relations both with patients and their families, as well as with staff'. Le Scouarnec continued working in Brittany before moving to Jonzac in southwestern France in 2008, where he remained until his retirement and then arrest 2017. Le Scouarnec was convicted to 15 years in prison in 2020 on charges of raping his 6-year-old neighbour, along with the rape and sexual assault of two of his nieces when they were children in the 1980s and '90s, and a four-year-old patient. But that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. The case has reignited calls for reforms to France's medical ethics codes, which critics have said discourage doctors from reporting abuse. Those who speak out risk legal consequences for violating professional 'fraternity' rules. Louis-Marie and some 50 other victims have formed their own campaign group to pressure the French authorities into action. It has questioned why a parliamentary commission has not been set up, as in other high-profile abuse cases. Many of them have asked, given the atrocious crimes, why does the whole world know the name of Gisèle Pelicot but not Joel Le Scouarnec? Frederic Benoist, a lawyer representing child protection advocacy group La Voix de L'Enfant (The Child's Voice), said media coverage was perhaps less important because the ex-surgeon 'admitted guilt on all counts after just two weeks'. Others argued that there was no single victim such as Gisèle Pelicot in the Le Scouarnec case, which was deemed exemplary as defence lawyers were far more respectful to the plaintiffs. For Myriam Guedj-Benayoun, a lawyer representing eight of Le Scouarnec's victims, there lies another, darker reason: 'We are in a state of societal denial about child abuse.' Could the trial change that? 'There is hope, of course, but it's slim given that no institution has come forward to admit responsibility. None,' she told The Telegraph. 'No commission has been set up, even today. If we had a priest in front of us instead of a doctor, maybe it would be different. 'But when it comes to the medical profession, it's ultra-protected and you mustn't rock the boat.' Yannick Neuder, the French health minister, pledged action in the wake of the verdict. 'Beyond this court ruling, we must take action, and I will work with the justice minister to ensure that this situation never happens again,' he told France Info. 'And that we never again find ourselves in a position where patients and vulnerable children, whether in local communities or elsewhere, are exposed to sexual predators.'
RNZ News
23-05-2025
- RNZ News
55 men arrested in France in major operation to bust online paedophile ring
By Pierre Bairin and Max Saltman , CNN File photo. Photo: 123RF Fifty-five men from across France have been arrested as part of a large-scale operation to dismantle a paedophile network operating through the messaging service Telegram, according to France's Office for the Protection of Minors. The suspects, aged between 25 and 75, are accused of exchanging messages on Telegram with an "extremely dangerous" child sex offender who was incarcerated in the summer of 2024, and whose own children were rescued after being abused, Quentin Bevan, head of the OFMIN's operational unit told CNN on Thursday. "These 55 individuals all exchanged CSAM imagery (Child Sexual Abuse Material) with the dangerous paedophile, so we had digital evidence implicating all of them," said Bevan. Bevan said that the arrests are "the fruit of a 10-month long investigation." "It was a major investigation and infiltration operation on this Telegram group," Bevan said. "We had to follow the exchanges, analyse them, and identify the individuals hiding behind these Telegram pseudonyms - especially those who had children, had criminal records, or worked in sensitive professions involving contact with children." Bevan said the men are from all ages and backgrounds: fathers, civil servants, military personnel, and paramedics. In France, the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material is punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a €100,000 (NZ$190k) fine. In a statement to CNN, Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn said the company has taken "extensive measures to combat child abuse." He said more than 367,000 groups and channels related to child sex abuse material have been removed in 2025 so far, as a result of its efforts. This is not the first high-profile case involving the platform in France. In August 2024, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was detained at Paris's Bourget Airport on a warrant related to Telegram's moderation policies. French authorities indicted Durov on 28 August 2024 on several charges, including money laundering and spreading child sex abuse material. Durov said in a statement soon afterwards that he was committed to improving his app's moderation and that authorities were trying to hold him "personally responsible for other people's illegal use of Telegram." -CNN
