Hopefully, the Le Scouarnec trial and Gisèle Pelicot trial will not be the handwriting on the wall, paving the way for more such cases (both public and private). Men, women, and children deserve far better than to be subject to the degradation of the pornography industry and its consumers.
Weeks after the Gisèle Pelicot case scandalized France, the country’s largest ever child sexual abuse trial began in Brittany on February 24, with 74-year-old former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec accused of raping or abusing 299 victims, most of them children who were his patients.
News outlet France 24 declared that “of the victims, 256 were under the age of 15, with the youngest just one year old.”
“I committed odious acts,” Le Scouarnec admitted to a court in Vannes, in remarks cited by Associated Press (AP). “They were only children.”
Mainstream news platform Euronews reported the following:
“One of his alleged victims, Annabelle* (name changed for privacy reasons), was summoned in 2019 by police investigators for a hearing which would change her life. ‘She discovered that Le Scouarnec had raped her when she was 11, while being treated for appendicitis in hospital’, Gwendoline Tenier, Annabelle’s lawyer, told Euronews. The incident happened in 2001 in a hospital in Brittany where Annabelle’s mother worked as a care assistant and Le Scouarnec had been practising for years, according to Tenier. The retired surgeon is accused of disguising the abuse he carried out as medical acts, targeting young patients who were less likely to understand what was going on.”
Le Scouarnec’s heinous behavior did not simply stop at the aforementioned crimes.
An article by the Daily Mail accused the former medical practitioner of “committing acts of such unimaginable horror”, including keeping “more than 30 years’ of meticulous confessional logs, in which he described, in graphic detail, the sexual abuse of at least 299 boys and girls.”
The Daily Mail elaborated:
“When the hundreds named in his records were contacted by police, they were appalled to learn that Le Scouarnec could have been stopped in 2005, when he was convicted of possessing child pornography.”
“In 2004, Le Scouarnec’s diaries could have been found when an FBI operation identified men who had paid for extreme child pornography from a website.”
“When a hospital colleague read about his conviction in the local press and raised concerns with the regional medical association, it was decided he had not violated the medical code of ethics and no sanctions were imposed. In 2008, Le Scouarnec secured a full-time surgical post in Jonzac. The director of the hospital was reportedly aware of his conviction but hired him anyway because there had been ‘no physical assault’, according to documents obtained by Radio France.”
Likewise, France 24 revealed that Le Scouarnec “was flagged by the FBI in 2004 for accessing child abuse images online while he was working in Lorient, a city in Britanny. A year later, a French court handed him a suspended four-month sentence. ”
Many mainstream media outlets covering the Le Scouarnec affair did not drive home the point strongly enough – that the former surgeon’s sick behavior is symptomatic of the perverse use of pornography (child or otherwise) for one’s own sexual gratification.
Nonetheless, the former surgeon had already moved to another city in Quimperlé, “where he was welcomed as a much-needed surgeon”, as per France 24.
Strikingly, France 24 pointed out how Le Scouarnec managed to escape relatively scot-free from the long arm of the law:
“However, his ability to continue practising medicine until his retirement despite early red flags has drawn sharp criticism of France’s medical regulatory bodies, particularly the Order of Physicians, which is now a civil party in the case. ‘How many people knew he was a paedophile and let him practise medicine?’ one victim asked AFP. ‘They knew and they did nothing.’”
It was only in 2017 when French authorities paid more attention to Le Scouarnec, after he molested his six-year-old neighbour. Back then, as per Reuters reports, police found in his home “a cache of sex dolls, wigs and child pornography.”
Moreover, police said “they also discovered electronic diaries that appeared to detail nearly three decades of rapes and sexual assaults on hundreds of his young patients in hospitals across the region”, Reuters added.
Notably, many mainstream media outlets covering the Le Scouarnec affair (including the ones I mentioned above) did not drive home the point strongly enough – that the former surgeon’s sick behavior is symptomatic of the perverse use of pornography (child or otherwise) for one’s own sexual gratification.
Previously, I highlighted how pornography use was instrumental in Dominique Pélicot’s odious acts of drugging his wife Gisèle, inviting strangers to abuse and rape her, and ruining her life (and that of her family’s).
Additionally, I mentioned the shocking prevalence of pornography worldwide, affecting even our churches, schools, and homes.
Le Scouarnec and Gisèle Pélicot are stark reminders of how pornography consumption is not simply a “private affair” or “hobby” that some misguided folks think “concerns only themselves”.
The Institute of Family Studies (IFS) put it aptly:
“Frequency of pornography use is predictive of relationship instability through lower levels of commitment, increased positive attitudes toward extramarital sex, and increased infidelity. Consequently, pornography use is experienced by many as “infidelity-lite”—a lesser helping of the negative consequences usually associated with actual intimate betrayal.”
Sadly, as governments, specialists and anti-porn advocates have elucidated, pornography “desensitizes people to sexual violence”.
For instance, Covenant Eyes reported:
“Studies spanning many decades have found connections between consuming violent porn and acting out accordingly. It makes sense: If you watch sexual violence played out on the screen as something that’s good and pleasurable, that affects you deeply. Even though most people do not act commit acts of sexual violence just because they’ve watched violent porn, it nonetheless makes these acts seem more acceptable.”
Covenant Eyes also detailed how investigations have unearthed how even mainstream porn sites have been involved in hosting CSAM (child sex abuse material), rape, and other illicit sexual content.
Acclaimed writer and pro-life advocate Jonathon Van Maren has written and spoken extensively on the disaster pornography wrecks on users’ lives as well as the people surrounding them.
Even one instance of porn addiction is a tragedy in itself. Lust is not simply a mere “physiological” reaction. Merely focusing on secular means to eradicate the demonic vice of pornography would be a wild goose chase.
Even leftist sites like The Guardian (a.k.a. the “The ‘guardian’ of Communism”) have admitted the deleterious effects of pornography.
Although the secular French government has taken some steps to curb the use of pornography among French people, there is still a lot of work to be done (as is always the case when it comes to dealing with such an insidious evil like pornography).
Even one instance of porn addiction (and subsequent family breakup) is a tragedy in itself. Lust is not simply a mere “physiological” reaction. Merely focusing on secular means to eradicate the demonic vice of pornography would be a wild goose chase.
That being said, government policies alone will not successfully exterminate pornography from users’ screens, since pornography consumption often begins at a young age.
Home environments that are godless, unmonitored, pleasure-seeking, dysfunctional and—God forbid—pornified, would unfortunately be brewing grounds for immorality. It is only by relying on Almighty God and the Blessed Virgin Mary that anyone can successfully overcome lust and pornography usage (and avert the other negative ramifications of pornography).
Hopefully, the two bombshell trial cases of Le Scouarnec and Gisèle Pelicot will not be the handwriting on the wall, paving the way for more such cases (both public and private). Men, women, and children deserve far better than to be subject to the degradation of the pornography industry and its consumers.
