The retired French surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec was sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing 299 patients, most of them minors, in hospitals in western France from 1989 to 2014.
The sentence, which is the heaviest possible for sex crimes under French law, was expected. But Le Scouarnec, 74, could be released for good behaviour in 2031, said Frédéric Benoist, lawyer for the association La Voix de l’Enfant (the Voice of the Child), in a telephone interview with The BMJ.
Although Le Scouarnec was also given a no remission sentence for two thirds of his term—another maximum punishment for such crimes in France—prison sentences in the country are not cumulative, and he has already been in detention for eight years. He was arrested in 2017 and was sentenced in 2020 to 15 years in prison by the court in Saintes, Charente-Maritime, for rape and sexual abuse of four minors, two of …