Le Scouarnec affair: what trauma for these children who realized as adults that they were victims?

in collaboration with

Johanna Rozenblum (clinical psychologist)

An extraordinary trial lasting three or four months will be held in 2025 before the Morbihan criminal court. Joël Le Scouarnec, a 73-year-old former visceral and digestive surgeon, is accused of having raped or sexually assaulted nearly 300 of his young patients, in several departments, during anesthesia or in the recovery room. And this for 25 years.

11 years old, the average age of young victims

It was in 2017 that the affair broke out thanks to the complaint of a 6-year-old girl, a neighbor of the surgeon who accused him of touching. A fact which led investigators to discover that the man kept a notebook of several thousand pages in which he listed other sexual assaults on young patients, as well as the names of his victims.

In a press conference in Lorient yesterday, October 7, the public prosecutor gave details of the facts for which he is accused, and which only add to the horror. At the end of 7 years of investigation, the case involves nearly 300 children whose average age is 11 years old.

Also“the oldest facts, outside the limitation period, date back to January 1989, and the most recent to January 2014”, continued the prosecutor. For these facts, the author faces 20 years of criminal imprisonment.

Victims who were not always aware of it

The criminal acts having been carried out in a medical setting and under anesthesia, many victims were also not fully aware of their attack. They discovered themselves as such, years after the fact, when they were summoned.

On Sept à Huit (TF1) in 2020, some were already telling the impact of this decisive news. Like Amélie, 9 years old at the time of the events, who without really knowing why, remained terrified of the hospital since her operation and suffered from eating disorders until adulthood. “I still felt something without being able to explain it, 30 years later” she expresses.

Or even Juliette, who experienced her trauma at 24, reading the facts “Suddenly, everything comes back to the surface, I have flashes that come back to my mind. I see someone coming into my room, who approaches me, (…) who tells me spreads his legs and tells me he’s going to go see if everything is going well. He raped me, he abused me.”

A traumatic revelation, but one that gives meaning

For Johanna Rozenblum, clinical psychologist, this tragic story once again highlights child crime in France. A real social problem that is still too widespread. “However, as adults, 40% of childhood sexual victims will have dark thoughts that can lead to suicide attempts. Criminals are still punished too little, and too little denounced. she begins.

Even in the case of children who have not noticed their aggression, the damage is done and can really impact the entire life of the young victims.

In this specific case, we must also count on the late revelation, sometimes decades later, which could have shaken the balance of the 300 victims.

However, she remains confident for these former patients. “Despite everything, this allows us to make sense, the victims better understand their journey, their suffering. This is the start of a journey of reconstruction,” she says before concluding. “This is undoubtedly an opportunity to recall that according to the Civil Society, 160,000 children are victims each year in complete silence.