White negligence: pedophile surgeon is being tried in France
The trial of Joel Le Squarnec, a surgeon and gastroenterologist who sexually abused his underage patients, continues in France. The pedophile was found to have diaries that he kept for 30 years. It follows from his notes that he feels like a pervert and a monster, but he can't help himself. Based on this, Le Squarnec is considered an "extraordinary manifestation of a pedophile" — everyone who has been prosecuted under this article in France before declared themselves "sick people." Therefore, they are not subject to condemnation and punishment. The 74-year-old defendant faces 20 years in prison, the maximum possible penalty for such a crime. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
I'm glad I'm a pedophile.
"This morning, when I was smoking a cigarette, I was thinking about what a pervert I am. I am at the same time an exhibitionist, sadist, fetishist, pedophile. And I'm very happy about it." Joel Le Squarnec wrote these words in his diary on April 10, 2004.
For 30 years, a French gastroenterologist surgeon molested and raped his underage patients. Almost from the first days of his medical career, he came up with the idea of keeping a diary in order to record his impressions of the acts committed, notes on the reaction of children to it, assessments of his own condition during and after rapes, and generally everything related to his pathological "hobby."
He kept a diary using a computer, and stored the data on CD-ROMs. Fearing hackers or ordinary robbers who could steal a laptop, I tried not to forget to erase all compromising information from the hard drive after the next session. However, the specialists still managed to find traces of visits and deleted files. As well as the original recordings, which the accused, without particularly bothering to find a reliable repository, kept just under the mattress.
These CDs appear in the Skuarnek case as the main evidence of the guilt of sexually abusing 299 patients, 258 of whom were under 15 years old at the time of the commission of the crime. According to investigators, there were more victims of Joel Le Squarnec — the figure was 349. However, some refused to testify, others did not want to participate in the investigation process at all.
Who is Joel Le Squarnec?
He was born in 1950 into a poor family. According to Skuarnek himself, poverty weighed on him constantly, and therefore, at the age of ten, he asked his father for advice on which profession to choose so that "nothing would be denied" in the future. The answer was immediate and specific: of course, you need to become a surgeon, they earn properly.
After that, Joel withdrew into himself, explaining that he needed to focus on mastering knowledge and therefore did not want to be distracted by trifles. Despite the financial difficulties that plagued the family, the guy still managed to get a prestigious education. He graduated from the University of Nantes in 1981, then specialized in visceral and digestive surgery for two years, after which he was assigned to work at the La Fontaine-de-Loche clinic in the Department of Indre-et-Loire.
The aspiring surgeon showed great promise, quickly climbed the career ladder and grew professionally, his colleagues testified. He started a family by marrying a nurse at the same Marie-France clinic. His wife brought him three children.
His success in the professional field overshadowed some of the "alarm bells" that began to sound almost from the first steps of independent work (he himself claims that he committed the first rape of a child in 1985). Colleagues noticed how his eyes lit up when examining naked children, but attributed it to his passion for the profession. Until the agents of the American FBI and the French police knocked on his door in 2004, no one suspected (now it is clear that they did not want to suspect) Le Squarnec is addicted to pedophilia.
In the early 2000s, FBI agents, untangling the threads of an international network that distributed child pornography, discovered that Joel Le Squarnec was one of the visitors to such sites. The Americans handed over the materials to their French colleagues, but they did not arrest the pedophile, but simply invited him to a conversation. After which, they finally decided that preventive admonitions to "not do this anymore" were not enough here, and they should search his house just in case. Which, it should be noted, did not give anything: the surgeon kept photos and videos containing child porn on his work computer at that time, and law enforcement officers did not think to search his office.
As a result, the doctor admitted that he had "visited prohibited sites several times," but "in order to satisfy his professional interest," he declared it his "accidental mistake" and "marital difficulties." After that, he promised not to click on such links anymore.
But he didn't keep his word, and in 2005 he was caught doing the same thing again. The scandal did not spill out — the clinic, where Squarneck was working at the time, did not need such fame. The surgeon was nevertheless convicted, but without publicity and only for four months of probation. The talented doctor was not suspended from his post and continued to work with children.
In 2006, psychiatrist Thierry Bonvalot sent a letter to the management of the hospital in Quimperle, where Squarneck worked, expressing concern about his "mental state" and warning that he was a danger to children. The head of the medical institution replied that Joel "is a thoughtful, competent, serious specialist." The danger signal was simply ignored. Bonvalot did not calm down and appealed to the regional medical association, but Squarneck's colleagues, by an absolute majority with one abstention, considered that "the surgeon had not violated ethical standards" and they "see no reason to ban him from treating children."
Joel Le Squarnec's inclinations were no secret to his family members, relatives, and loved ones. From the testimony of the surgeon's sister, Anna, it follows that he repeatedly raped her two daughters. One day she tried to talk to him about this topic — according to her, her brother burst into tears and confessed everything. The man's tears touched the woman's heart, and the conversation ended with her advice to "take a course of treatment."
Marie-France, according to the documents, is still Le Squarnec's wife, stated that she "did not know about his addiction until the moment of her husband's arrest." Although the accused himself noted in his diaries that back in 1996, she became "aware of everything, and they decided to divorce."
In 2000, the couple actually broke up, although the divorce was not officially formalized.
An inherited vice?
French media claim that Le Squarnec's father Joseph was sexually assaulted several times in the forties of the last century at a seminary in Van. Many years later, Joseph himself abused his grandson, Joel's son. Besides his nieces, Joel also raped his own granddaughter. The situation has been repeated many times.
Joel Le Squarnec was arrested in 2017. According to the French press, for a long time he felt unpunished and relaxed too much — his victims usually never complained anywhere. But one day, Squarneck's six-year-old neighbor came home from the street in tears and told her that "grandpa, who lives in the yard next door," showed her his genitals. The parents suspected that the child had not told them everything, and they took their daughter to the doctor. Who recorded that the girl had been raped.
The investigation into this episode was conducted for three years. His first trial took place in 2020, when Joel Le Squarnec received 15 years in prison for raping four girls on police victim lists.
The convict was even happy about it. "Prison was a kind of liberation for me," he wrote in his now paper-based diaries. "It freed me from the oppression that had kept me in suspense for 30 years because of my attraction to children."
The verdict announced in 2020 was not final. A little later, the same CDs with diary entries were discovered. And the law enforcement officers had to reopen the case. Due to the newly discovered circumstances, which resulted in a huge increase in the list of victims from a sexually disturbed surgeon. The court hearings in this case began a few days ago. The verdict is expected to be announced in July this year.
A white coat hiding the horrors
The French media blame the country's healthcare system for everything that happened. According to the press, "people in white coats have become inviolable persons, complaints against them have no effect. The doctor is a king and a god, an infallible specialist, a priori innocent of anything. This creates a system of mutual responsibility, thanks to which any crime becomes possible and unpunished."
"In addition to the usual adult dominance over a child, Le Squarnec used his status as a doctor and the power over his patients' bodies that his official position gave him," says Corentin Legra, a researcher at the prestigious Paris Graduate School of Social Sciences (EHESS) and an expert on sexual violence against minors. — The white coat effect became the key to his story of mass rapes. He knew the wards where the minors were kept, and when their parents left and the patients were alone, he entered there to mock them."
"Most of the victims were conscious at the time of the rape, although they did not understand what was happening to them," says Hugo Lemonnier, author of the book Piégés ("Trapped"). "About a third of them were sleeping because of the anesthesia." It is known from Dr. Le Squarneck's "intimate diary" that only 35 of the nearly 300 patients who were attacked retained any memories of these events. The mother of one of them told reporters about her incredulous reaction when her son told her: "I don't want this doctor to touch me! He's going to touch my genitals again!" She told him not to exaggerate, that this was normal. She still did not understand that the child was describing to her the sexual abuse being inflicted on him by the doctor.
In his gruesome notes, Le Squarnec actually boasted that these patients had "allowed" themselves to be raped. And he "insisted" and "forced them a little" if these children resisted the harm he was causing them. He also took advantage of his colleagues' lack of vigilance. And if, nevertheless, someone decided to report something out of the ordinary, then... The management of medical institutions at various levels could have ignored this information.
"I don't think it's a coincidence that he could behave this way for 25 years. He took advantage of the fact that he could get away with anything," says Sonya Bish, a representative of the StopVOG group, which specializes in reporting violence during childbirth. This activist recalls other shocking cases of doctors raping patients. For example, episodes involving Dr. Emile Darai, a renowned Parisian gynecologist who continues to practice despite being charged with 32 assaults on female patients in his office. Or the case of Bernard Henrik, who was arrested only eight years after his sexual aggression was first reported by his patients.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
