Victims in the French process for abuse of children of Le Scouarnec shocked by public indifference

This had to be a catalytic, catalytic moment for French society.

Terrifying but unchanging. Unbeaten.

The seaside city of Vaness in southern Brittany had carefully prepared a special place and a separate amphitheater for the overflow for the case.

Hundreds of journalists were accredited as a process that would surely dominate the titles in France throughout its three -month duration and forced a strange public to stand against a crime too often diverted on the sidelines.

Warning: Some of the details of this story are disturbing

The comparisons were quickly made with – and the expectations tied to last year’s test of massive rape of Pelicot in southern France and the mass global attention it won.

Instead, the process of the most fruitful known pedophile in France, Joel Le Squarnak – a retired surgeon who confessed to the court of rape or sexual assault over 299 people, almost all children – ends this Wednesday against the backdrop of widespread dissatisfaction.

“I’m exhausted. I’m angry. I don’t have much hope at the moment. Society seems completely indifferent. It’s scary to think (rape) can happen again,” said one of the victims of Le Square, said the 36 -year -old Manon Lemin.

Da Lemoine and about 50 other victims, struck by an apparent lack of public interest in the process, created their own campaign group to put pressure on the French authorities, accusing the government of ignoring a “remarkable” case that revealed a “true laboratory for institutional failures”.

The group asked why a parliamentary committee was not established, as in other cases of abuse of high -profile abuses and indicated that we would feel “invisible” as if “the large number of victims prevented us from being recognized.”

Some of the victims, most of whom have originally chosen to testify anonymously, have now decided to reveal their identity in a public place – even to pose for pictures of the court steps – in the hope of taking more attention to France to pay more attention and, perhaps, to learn the decrease of respect.

The crimes for which Le Scouarnec has been examined has all happened between 1998 and 2014.

“It’s not normal that I have to show my face. (But) I hope that what we are doing now will change things. So we decided to rise to hear our voices,” said G -Je Lemoine.

So what went wrong?

Were the horrors too extreme, the topic was too powerless gloomy or just too uncomfortable to think?

Why, when the whole world knows the name of Dominic and Jisel Pelicot, has a test of significantly more victims – victims of children abused under the noses of French treatment – accepted with what feels a little more than a team?

Why does the world don’t know the name Joel Le Squarnak?

“The case with Le Scouarnec does not mobilize many people. Maybe because of the number of casualties. We hear the disappointment, the lack of widespread mobilization, which is a pity,” said Mil Nori of the feminist non -governmental organization All of us (All of us).

Some observers have reflected the absence in the case of a single, totemic figure such as Gisèle Pelicot, whose public courage caught the public imagination and enabled people to find some light in an otherwise gloomy story.

Others have come to more devastating conclusions.

“The problem is that this test is for sexual abuse of children.

There is a virtual silence On this topic worldwide, but especially in France. “We just don’t want to admit it,” myriam Guedj-Benayoun told me, a lawyer representing several of the victims of Le Scouarnec.

In her final arguments to the court, Mrs. Guedj-Benayoun condemned what she called the “systemic, organized silence” of France in terms of abuse of children.

She talks about a patriarchal society in which men in respected positions such as medicine remain almost beyond reproach and pointed out “the silence of those who know, those who look otherwise, and those who may have – must – to raise the alarm.”

The corruption exhibited during the test is amazing – too much for many of the stomach.

The Vanessa Court has heard with a pain the details of how the 74 -year -old Le Scoarnk has broken into his pedophilia, carefully describing any rape of a child in a series of black notebooks, often pursuing his vulnerable young patients while under anesthetics or recovering from surgery.

The court also said of the growing isolation of the retired surgeon and what his own lawyer described as “your descent to hell” in the last decade before being caught in 2017 after abusing a neighbor’s six -year -old daughter.

Until the end, alone in a dirty house, drinking heavy and ostracized by many of his relatives, Le Squarnak spent much of his time looking at the violent images of rape of children online and possessing a collection of animals dolls the size of children.

“I was emotionally attached to them … they did what I wanted,” Le Squarnak told the court in his quiet monoton.

Several intersections from the Court of Justice, in an adapted civil hall, journalists watch the production develop on a television screen. In recent days, the seats have begun to fill and cover the test increased as it moves to closeness.

Many commentators have noted how the Le Scouarnec test, like the Pelicot case, exposed the deep institutional failures that allowed the surgeon to continue their rapes long after they could be found and stopped.

Dominic Pelicot was caught Upskirting at a supermarket in 2010 and his DNA quickly contacted an attempt to rape in 1999 – a fact that was not surprisingly followed by the whole decade.

In the process of Le Scouarnec, a series of medical officers have explained-some shameful, others who are self-serving-how the reconciled health system in rural areas has been choosing for years to ignore the fact that the surgeon was reported by the US FBI in 2004 after using a credit card to pay.

“I was advised not to talk about such a person,” said a doctor who tried to sound the alarm.

“There is a shortage of surgeons and those who appear are welcomed as the Messiah,” explained the hospital director.

“I confused, I admit, like the whole hierarchy,” finally acknowledged a different administrator.

Another link between Pelicot and Le Scouarnec cases is what they both revealed about our understanding – or the lack of understanding – of trauma.

Without warning or support, Giselle Pelicot has sharply faced police with video evidence of his own drugs and rape.

Later, during the process, some defense lawyers and other commentators sought to minimize her suffering, pointing to the fact that she was unconscious during rapes – as if there was a trauma, as a wound when his scar was visible to the simple eye.

In the case of Le Scouarnec, the French police seem to have begun to seek many victims of the pedophile in a similar way, calling for people for an unexplained interview and then to inform them by the blue that they were listed in the surgeon’s notebooks.

The reactions of many victims of Le Scouarnec varied significantly. Some have just chosen not to deal with the test or child experience that have no memory.

For other news, the abuse has been deeply affected.

“You went into my head, it destroys me. I became a different person – one I do not recognize,” the victim said, turning to Le Scouarnec in court.

“I have no memories and I’m already damaged,” another said.

“It turned me upside down,” a policeman admitted.

And then there is a different group of people who – unlike Giselle Pelicot – have found that the knowledge of their abuse is revealed, which allows them to make sense of things that they have not understood about themselves or their lives before.

Some are related to their childhood violence with a common sense of misery, bad behavior or failure in life.

For others, the relationships were much more specific, helping to explain the litan of mysterious symptoms and behavior, from fear of intimacy to repeated genital infections and eating disorders.

“With my boyfriend every time we have sex, I vomit,” a woman revealed in court.

“I had so many consequences of my surgery. But no one could explain why I was experiencing this irrational fear of hospitals,” said another victim, Ameli.

Some of them have described the test itself as a group therapeutic session, with victims being associated with shared traumas that they previously believed to suffer on their own.

“This trial is like a clinical laboratory involving 300 casualties. I sincerely hope to change France. In any case, it will change the perception of victims for trauma and traumatic memory,” said the lawyer, Mrs. Guedj-Benayoun.

Despite his concerns about the lack of public interest, Manon Lemain said the process helped the victims “recover, to turn a page. We put out our pain and experiences and leave it behind (in the courtroom). So, for me, it was really released.”

Recognizing his crimes, Le Surnek will inevitably receive a guilty sentence and almost certainly remain in prison for the rest of his life.

Two of his victims took his life a few years before the trial – a fact he acknowledged in court with the same repentant, but a formulated excuse that he offered to everyone else.

In the meantime, some activists remain hope that the case will be a turning point in French society.

“Compared to Pelicot’s test … We can see that we’re not talking much about the LE Scouarnec case. We have to come together. We have to do this, otherwise nothing will happen, and the Le Scouarnec process will not serve any purpose. I was also a child. We are obliged to react and organize.” Arnaud’s campaign, a child’s rights campaign and on the basis of Mov’enfants.

A more cautious grade came from the lawyer, Mrs. Guedj-Benayoun.

“Now there is a very important opposition between those who want to deny the child’s sexual violence and those who want to conceal him, and this opposition is done today in this ordeal. Who will win?” She wondered.

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