The ex-wife of the surgeon accused of abusing 299 children said she "never suspected anything": the pain of her children

The ex-wife of Joël Le Scouarnec , the surgeon on trial in France for the country's largest case of paedophilia, with 299 victims counted in the trial against him, denied knowing the crimes confessed by her partner, despite testimonies indicating that she could have stopped him but did not.

The woman said she never suspected her husband of abusing and raping children in the hospitals and clinics where he worked. “ There is nothing that could have led me to believe that. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I never had any doubts ,” said Marie-France , 71, on the third day of the trial against her ex-husband, which is taking place in the criminal court of Vannes.

The woman, who divorced Le Scouarnec in 2023 , insisted that she never had the slightest suspicion about the paedophile tendencies of her husband, accused of assaulting 158 men and 141 women between 1989 and 2014. The average age of the alleged victims was 11 years old. Le Scouarnec is already in prison, after a 15-year sentence in 2020 for abusing four minors, including two of his nieces.

The accused's brother, however, claimed that Marie-France " was aware of her husband's actions and did nothing to stop him ." The man admitted that he has "no proof" of his accusation, but a key detail is that, in a notebook, Le Scouarnec wrote, in 1996, a sentence that would refer to his wife: "She knows, she knows that I am a paedophile. She forgives me."

She "could have had my brother arrested," insisted the man, who did not hide his enmity with his ex-sister-in-law, whom he accused of "wanting her husband for money," of having slept with his sister's first husband, of having had a lover and even of having made advances towards him as well. He also did not hide his anger towards his brother: "I think he should be imprisoned until he dies , that would be good for society," he said.

The brother, five years younger than the former surgeon, said he had cut all ties with him since he filed a complaint in 2017 about the rape of his six-year-old neighbour, which led to the seizure of notebooks and files in which the doctor meticulously noted the names of his victims and the sexual violence he had inflicted on them under anesthesia in hospitals in western France.

The statement of the former surgeon's two sons: "An atomic bomb"

Two sons of the 74-year-old former surgeon explained at his macro-trial on Tuesday the devastation that their father's case brought to the family. "He wasted his life, he had everything to be happy and the perversion exploded like an atomic bomb in the family . In the end the evil was very great," said the eldest son of the doctor, 42 years old.

“ I don’t know where this perversion came from. I don’t even understand it ,” added the son of the accused. He then compared his father to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, a simile also used by his mother and the surgeon’s ex-wife. In addition, the man told the court that he himself had been raped and sexually assaulted by his grandfather , Le Scouarnec’s father, when he was between 5 and 10 years old. Asked if the surgeon was also abused by his own father, he replied: “I think so, but he always told me no.”

His youngest son, a 37-year-old electrician, told the court he remembered growing up in a "normal family" where some things "were not said". "I have very good memories of my father," he said. That is why he cut off contact with him when his crimes came to light: "I wanted to maintain that image of him," he explained. With his father watching from the dock, the youngest son said he did not believe he had been abused himself, but admitted that after the case broke he had become "a bit paranoid" . "I never leave my son alone," he said.

A commission set up by the government to protect child victims of sexual abuse said the first suspicions about Le Scouarnec's misconduct within his family should have been "reported immediately".

At his home in the western French town of Jonzac, where the surgeon lived like a hermit with dozens of dolls, police found more than 300,000 images of sexual exploitation , as well as thousands of pages of lists and diaries on his computer with accounts of the abuse he inflicted on his victims under anesthesia, sometimes even on the operating table. "I am a paedophile and I always will be," said one of his notes.

Four days without Lian: raids, testimonies and more than 300 officers working to find him

In 2005, a Vannes court had already sentenced him to four months in prison, with a suspended sentence, for possession of child pornography. In 2006, the surgeon was reported to the Order of Physicians when a colleague discovered his criminal conviction, but no action was taken .

The crimes did not come to light until 2017, when a six-year-old neighbour reported the incident. His ex-wife said it was only then that she discovered the surgeon's "predilections." "I ask myself how I could have completely overlooked it. It's a horrible betrayal for me and my children ," Marie-France said in an interview with the regional daily Ouest France.

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