This story contains disturbing details from the beginning
When Mauricette Vinet talks about her granddaughter, her voice warmly becomes affection.
“He was a beautiful little boy. He had a strong personality, for sure! But he always thought of others, he always asked if he could help,” says the French pensioner, in the 80s.
“He loved being out in the garden with his grandfather, choosing green beans. He was a charming boy, Mathis,” she adds.
“But, as you know, there was” before ” – and it was” after “.”
Mauricette and her husband Roland are one of the 267 prosecutors who have pressed charges against Joël Le Scouarnec, a French former surgeon who has been accused of abusing almost 300 people – mostly children and almost all of his patients – over several decades. The trial began on Monday in Vannes, Brittany.
Le Scouarnec and Mathis crossed the paths only once, when Mathis, 10 years old, was hospitalized overnight at a clinic in a small French northwestern city of Quimperlé. Le Scouarnec – a mildly mannered, respected gastroenterologist, ”Mathis’s parents told Mathis that the boy had to stay overnight to check overnight.
It turned out that Mathis was just suffering his stomach and sent home the next day. But Mauricette is convinced that a short stay in the hospital has changed Mathis forever.
“The discomfort was set, little by little. It happened gradually in the first year; then he stopped being happy and became aggressive with everyone,” says the BBC.
There is no way to finally determine whether Mathis’s troubles are related to the surgeon. What is certain is that in his teenage years, Mathis distanced himself from his family and began to use more and more severe drugs; He later spent time in Detox and rehabilitation centers.
Then in 2018, police knocked on his door.
They told him that a man named Joël Le Scouarnec was arrested a year before for raping his six -year -old neighbor. During the search of the surgeon’s house, police discovered piles of diaries and hard disks that seemed to have listed hundreds of more victims Le Scouarnec. Mathis’s name was among them.
Mauricerette said Mathis said her police then read the diary passage, which seemed to abuse in detail how Le Scouarnec was applied to him during his hospital stay.
“Then they left. Mathis closed the door and left alone, without help. And that was the beginning of descending to hell,” says Mauricette.
A police visit helped Mathis understand Flashbacks who had been tormented for a long time, Mauricette says, “His torment finally made sense; he followed him to the source.”
Mathis pressured the charges against Le Scouarnec, but the revelation sent him a spiral that ended abruptly on April 14, 2021, when Mathis overdose and died. He was 24 years old.
Mauricette and her husband pressured the charges the next day, and they are now listed as the “indirect victims” by Le Scouarnec. They attended the Vannes Court, northwestern France, every day since the trial was opened on Monday.
It was not easy to listen.
Witnesses’ testimony – mostly close relatives of Le Scouarnec, who is now 74 years old – painted a picture of a seemingly ordinary middle -class family that, behind the scenes, ravaged children abuse, incest and sexual violence.
Annie, sister of Le Scouarneca, said she “taught her to be silent.”
This week everything is outdoors.
All three sons of Le Scouarneca hit almost apologizing the tone as they spoke to the court about their happy childhood with a cultivated, intellectual father who may not have been particularly present, but who was kind, patient and supporting.
“We had holidays, beautiful houses – everything that represents a normal family,” one said.
The youngest son – who said that he had stopped contact with Le Scouarnec in 2017. “In order to preserve a picture of him I have from childhood,” he said he “looked at everything with distrust” and never left his own child alone with anyone.
“I’m always worried that if my father could do it, my neighbor could, my partner, anyone,” said the 37-year-old.
Later, the middle son – a tall man in his early 40s who admitted to “not a completely abstainer alcoholic” – shared his memories of abuse in the hands of his grandfather’s father, Le Scouarnec’s father.
He was shocked that he was told for the first time that some of his childhood friends were alleged victims.
On Friday, a stunned silence descended on the courtroom, while Le Scouarnec admitted that he had abused his granddaughter – the daughter of her eldest son when she was under five. A moment after the revelation, the 44-year-old and his partner left the room to help them a psychologist.
Other witnesses caused concern with the plaintiff. Due to their pure number, they sit in a separate room – a former university lecture room – and monitor the procedure through a video connection.
Christian D., a friend of Le Scouarnec, who is now 80 years old, has often answered questions with sarcastically and has repeatedly minimized the events in the center of the trial, declaring that he cannot “afford to cry for everything that has happened in the world.”
He later insisted that he had never seen anything, so he had nothing to say “about devastating allegations against his friend. When he stated that he would take Le Scouarnec if he ever left prison, many alleged victims in the lecturer stood up and left their places.
But Mauricerette and Roland was the hardest thing for the long-awaited testimony of Marie-Franca L., his ex-wife Le Scouarnec.
It is stated that she was at the center of Omerta, which reigned in the Le Scouarnec family, because she was repeatedly aware of her husband’s obsessions to the children, but did nothing to stop it.
Many lawyers and prosecutors now believe that hundreds of children from abuse could spare. Le Scouarnec’s brother – who also heard this week – he wondered openly if she was too fascinated by her life -style lifestyle to utter.
Marie-Franca has always deny it and, on the booth, has encountered that there is an equal accusation that equated to her.
“The disaster struck: she knows I am a pedophile,” Le Scouarnec wrote as early as the mid-1990s in his diary. “Maybe he talked about his conscience,” Marie-French said in court.
She also suggested that her five-year-old niece-for, who was convicted of rape-raped Le Scouarnec, most probably “manipulated” her husband.
“She’s disgusting, she loves her attention,” she said. She later complained that she was “guilty” for everything. Only when she was shown an rude photo editing of Le Scouarnec made of their son as a child did she look visibly shocked.
“It was an absolute theater,” Mauricette told the BBC, adding that Christian D.’s testimony was “awful” and that she thought Marie-French was living in “pure denial.”
As the events played, Le Scouarnec sat in his box-hungry box without a reaction, but sometimes he was noticeably disturbed, his voice cracked as he sought his sons for forgiveness. He hit when the readers of their diary and prevented their eyes as shown the rude photos he took from his nephews.
His lawyers said he acknowledged the “majority” charges against him and that he would explain during the trial, which should last until June.
The alleged victims will take an attitude from next week; Mauricette and Roland will do so in April. “I’ll look at Le Scouarnec and tell him what’s deep in my heart – he killed my granddaughter,” Mauricette says.
“Not with a gun, but he killed him,” she adds. “He will get 20 years, but his victims … He will have to live with that all his life.
“Their sentences will be longer than his.”
Throughout the week, in the hall of the victims, people came and left, but most remained for hours at the end of each day.
As the descriptions of trauma and abuse were poured, one middle -aged woman covered her face with her hand and kept him there for a long time.
Next to her, the young man rubbed his eyes several times, then stood up and left.
