His name was in a diary for abuse of children

This story contains unpleasant details from the beginning

When Maurichet Vignet talks about her grandson, her voice warms up with love.

“He was a wonderful little boy. He had a strong personality for sure! But he always thought of others, always asked him if he could help,” says the French retiree of his 80s.

“He loved being out in the garden with his grandfather, picking green beans. He was a charming boy, Matisse,” she adds.

“But, as you know, there were” before ” – and there were” after. “

Maurichet and her husband Roland are among the 267 claimants who have charged Joel Le Squirn, the former French surgeon who has been accused of abuse of almost 300 people – mostly children and almost all his patients – for several decades. The test began in Vaness, Brittany, on Monday.

Le Scouarnec and Mathis passed paths only once when Matisse, 10, was hospitalized overnight at the clinic in the small French northwestern city of Quimperle. Le Scouarnec – a soft maneuverable, respected gastroenterologist – told Matisse’s parents that the boy should be held overnight for checks.

It turned out that Matisse only hurts the stomach and he was sent home the next day. But Mauricet is convinced that the short stay in the hospital has changed Matisse forever.

“Undoubtedly appeared, little by little. It happened gradually in the first year; then he stopped being happy and became aggressive with everyone,” she told the BBC.

There is no way to determine whether Matis’s problems were related to the surgeon. It is sure that in his teenage years, Matisse distances himself from his family and began to use increasingly solid drugs; Later, he spends time in detox and rehabilitation centers.

Then, in 2018, police knocked on his door.

He was told that a man named Joel Le Surrnek had been arrested the previous year for raping his six -year -old neighbor. During the search of the surgeon’s home, police reveal piles of diaries and hard drives in which Le Scouarnec seems to have listed hundreds more victims. The name of Matisse was among them.

Mauricet told Matisse told her that the police had read her an excerpt from the diary to him, which seemed to describe in detail the abuse of Le Surnek, applied to him during his stay in the hospital.

“Then they left. Matis closed the door and was left alone without help. And it was the beginning of a descent into hell,” Mauricet says.

The visit to the police helped Matisse make sense of the lightning that had long been tortured, Mauricet says: “His discomfort finally makes sense; He followed him to the source. “

Matisse has charged Le Squarnak, but the revelations sent him with a spiral, which sharply ended on April 14, 2021, when Matisse overdose and died. He was 24.

Mauricet and her husband have been charged the next day and now they are referred to as “indirect victims” of Le Scouarnec. They attended the court in Vaness, northwestern France, every day since the opening of the trial on Monday.

It was not easy listening.

Witnesses’ testimonies – mostly close relatives of Le Scouarnec, now at 74 – have drawn a picture of an obviously ordinary middle -class family, which behind the scenes is devastated by violence against children, incest and sexual abuse.

Annie, Le Surnek’s sister, said she was “taught to remain silent.”

Everything was outdoors this week.

All three sons of Le Scouarnec have achieved an almost apologetic tone as they told the court about their happy childhood with a cultural, intellectual father who may not have been particularly present, but who is kind, patient and supportive.

“We had holidays, nice houses – everything that is a normal family,” one said.

The younger son – who said he stopped contacting Le Scouarnec in 2017, “to preserve the image of him I have from my childhood,” he said that he was now “looking at everyone with distrust” and never left his own young child with anyone.

“I always worry that if my father could do this, then my neighbor could, my partner, someone,” said the 37-year-old.

Later, the average son, a tall man in his early 40s, who admitted that he was “not completely abstained alcoholic” – shared his memories that he was abused in the hands of his paternal grandfather, the father of Le Square.

He was shocked as he was told for the first time in court that some of his childhood friends were among his alleged victims of his father.

On Friday, a stunned silence descended in the courtroom when Le Surnek admitted that he had abused his granddaughter – the daughter of his oldest son when she was under five years old. Moments after the Revelation, the 44-year-old and his partner left the room to be aided by a psychologist.

Other witnesses aroused the plaintiffs. Due to their clean number, they sit in a separate room – a former lecture of the university – and follow the production through a video connection.

Christian D., a friend of Le Scouarnec, who is already 80 years old, often answered questions from the court sarcastic and repeatedly minimized events at the center of the process, saying that he could not “allow himself to cry for everything that had happened in the world.”

Later, he insisted that “he has never seen anything, so there is nothing to say” about the devastating accusations against his friend. When he said he would take Le Scouarnec, if he had ever left prison, many alleged victims in the lecture hall got up and left their seats.

But the hardest for Maurichet and Roland was the highly anticipated testimony of Marie-France L., the ex-wife of Le Scoarnak.

She is said to have been at the center of Omerta, who reigned in the family of Le Scouarnec, as she was repeatedly aware of her husband’s obsession with the children, but did nothing to stop him.

Many lawyers and plaintiffs now think that she could spare hundreds of children to be abused. Le Surnek’s brother – who was also heard this week – was openly wondering if she was too much in love with the lifestyle provided by her husband’s salary to talk.

Marie-France has always denied this, and at the stand it came across arrogant and often challenging in the face of the accusations leveled against it.

“The crash struck: She knows I’m a pedophile,” Le Surnek wrote in the mid-1990s in her diary. “Maybe he was talking about his conscience,” Marie-France told the court.

She also suggested that her five-year-old niece, who Le Surnek, was convicted of rape-most likely she “manipulated” her husband.

“She’s disgusting, this one. She loves attention,” she said. Later, she complained that she was “charged” for everything. It was only when she was shown an indecent photo of the LE Squarek installation taken by their son as a child that she looked visibly shocked.

“It was an absolute theater,” Maurkett told the BBC, adding that Christian D.’s testimony had been “disgusting” and that he believes that Marie-France is living in “pure denial.”

As the tingling events were playing out, Le Surnek sat in his box-most of all, but sometimes noticeably excited, his voice cracked as he asked his sons for forgiveness. He blinked when excerpts from his diary were read, and diverted his eyes as she was shown obscene pictures he took from his nephews.

His lawyers told him that he acknowledged the “majority” of the charges against him and that he would be explained in the course of the trial, which should continue until June.

The alleged victims will take the position of next week; Mauricette and Roland will do so in April. “I’ll look at Le Scouarnec and tell him what is deep in my heart – he killed my grandson,” Mauricet says.

“Not with a gun, but he killed him,” she adds. “He will receive 20 years, but his victims … will have to live with this whole life.

“Their sentences will be longer than his sentences.”

Throughout the week, in the victims Hall, people came and left, but the majority stayed for hours every day.

As the descriptions of trauma and abuse poured themselves, a middle -aged woman covered her face with her hand and held her there for a long time.

Next to her, a young man has repeatedly rubbed her eyes, then stood up and left.