LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A massive child sex abuse trial has begun this week in the west of France.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Yeah, a once-respected surgeon admitted to abusing hundreds of minors over decades, most of them while under anesthesia. The trial is set to last four months. Victims' advocates hope this will prompt a hard look at the failure with a system that should have prevented such abuse.
FADEL: We go now to NPR's Eleanor Beardsley to hear more. And just a warning that you're about to hear some disturbing details about this case. Good morning, Eleanor.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So just break down the case for us first. Who is this surgeon? Where did he practice? Who did he abuse?
BEARDSLEY: OK. His name is Joel Le Scouarnec. He's 74 years old now, and he was a prominent surgeon in western France specializing in appendectomies, abdominal and gynecological surgery. He's accused of abusing 299 of his patients over three decades...
FADEL: Wow.
BEARDSLEY: ...Both girls and boys, and the average age was 11. He carried out the abuse mostly when they were anesthetized, when he was alone with them in the operating theater or recovery room. And damningly, he was flagged for possessing child pornography in 2004. The FBI actually alerted French authorities after his credit card was linked to a pornography site. But the French judge imposed a four-month suspended sentence with no restrictions on his practice or mandated therapy.
He went on to serve in many hospitals and continued his abuse until 2017, when he coaxed his 6-year-old neighbor into his backyard and abused her. He's now serving 15 years for that and facing another 20 for the new abuse cases that have come out since because he kept meticulous diaries of his abuse and named his patients.
FADEL: Wow.
BEARDSLEY: I spoke with Francesca Satta, a lawyer representing 10 victims and families. Here she is.
FRANCESCA SATTA: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: She says he benefited from an omerta - a silence - both personal and professional. He abused his own nieces. And Satta, like many, believe his then-wife, among others, must have suspected something.
FADEL: I mean, you describe him getting caught around child pornography in 2004, and then his abuse continues for nearly over a decade. Why was he not stopped?
BEARDSLEY: Yeah, well, that's the question. You know, I spoke with freelance journalist Hugo Lemonier, who just wrote a book about it. And he says this trial, if it's only about this one man, will be a failure because the point, he says, is we continued to allow Le Scouarnec to be alone with children. No one asked questions, likely because of his high position in society as a surgeon. Here's Lemonier.
HUGO LEMONIER: After he was found guilty of child pornography, nothing has changed because nobody wanted to see him as a danger. Nobody wanted to see the predator.
BEARDSLEY: And even though he's admitted his guilt, Leila, in France, the trial proceeds despite a, you know, confession, unlike in the U.S.
FADEL: And this comes after another very covered trial internationally that documented a pattern of sexual abuse in France - a different trial, right?
BEARDSLEY: That's right. Last year, the world watched the trial of a French man - and many other men - who drugged his wife and brought these men into their home to rape her over a 10-year period and filmed it all. And just like in that case with the husband, this surgeon has admitted guilt. Yesterday as the trial opened, Le Scouarnec told the court, if I'm appearing before you, it's because one day, when most of these people were just children, I committed hideous acts.
But this trial is missing what the other one had, which made it possible really to get through it for everyone watching - a hero, the wife Gisele Pelicot, who bravely demanded that it be public so that society could progress. And that has led to a shift in mentalities and actually concrete changes in rape laws. People are hoping that this trial will have a similar effect.
FADEL: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris, thank you for your reporting.
BEARDSLEY: Thank you, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR鈥檚 programming is the audio record.
