A former surgeon went on trial in France on Monday for the alleged rape or sexual abuse of 299 victims, most of them children who were his patients, in what investigators and his own notebooks describe as a pattern of violence spanning over three decades. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney speaks to campaigner Mié Kohiyama, co-founder of the Brave Movement and 'Be Brave France'. She says that France is plagued by collective denial and major impunity of child sexual abuse.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00This is Apropos. The harm that I've caused is beyond repair, the words of a retired surgeon
00:09who's gone on trial in western France, accused of the rape and sexual assault of 299 patients,
00:16the vast majority of whom were children. 74-year-old Joël Lescournac told the court that he had
00:22committed despicable acts, already serving a 15-year sentence for earlier convictions.
00:28Victims' rights groups say this case raises uncomfortable questions for France's publicly
00:33run healthcare system. Yinka Oyatadi has the details.
00:39Matisse was just 10 years old when he was first taken to see Joël Lescournac. It wasn't
00:44until a decade later that his grandparents found out their grandson was one of the doctor's
00:50alleged sex abuse victims. Matisse died of an overdose at 24 after struggling with addiction.
00:56Standing in front of the courthouse where Joël Lescournac is standing trial, Matisse's
01:01grandparents say he'd still be alive if he had never met the former surgeon.
01:06I can't wait to see him and tell him what's in my heart, that he killed our grandson.
01:12Obviously he didn't put a gun to his head, but he killed him.
01:16Matisse is one of 299 patients Lescournac is accused of having raped and abused over
01:23the course of nearly three decades. Most were children at the time. Lescournac has been
01:29convicted of sex crimes on two previous occasions. Back in 2005, he was handed a suspended four-month
01:35prison sentence for possessing child pornography. Despite his conviction, Lescournac managed
01:42to secure a job as a surgeon at a hospital in western France the following year, where
01:47prosecutors say he continued his abuse. Protesters outside the courthouse want answers as to
01:52why Lescournac was allowed to continue working.
01:58This is typically a situation where the National Council of the Order of Doctors has almost
02:03certainly not done its job. The why's, the how's, that's for the judge to determine.
02:11But what is certain is that Joël Lescournac slipped under the radar.
02:17The evidence at the centre of this trial are the former surgeon's own diaries where he
02:22detailed the abuses. The 74-year-old has admitted to the vast majority of the charges. Already
02:28serving jail time for earlier rape convictions, Lescournac faces up to 20 years in prison
02:34if found guilty.
02:35For more on this distressing case, we're joined by Mie Koyama, co-founder of the Brave movement
02:43and Be Brave France, also a survivor of abuse. Thank you so much for being with us on the
02:50programme Mie. This man, as we've been hearing, managed to secure a job as a surgeon at a
02:56public hospital, several of them, in Western France, despite having been convicted of possession
03:02of child abuse images. He was even at one stage promoted to head surgeon at one hospital,
03:09despite management having been made aware of that conviction. So what does this trial
03:14tell us about how crimes against children are viewed and treated here in France?
03:20This is a very good question. And the question of his suspended sentence for detention, consultation
03:31of child sexual abuse material. And then afterwards, when he was hired in this new hospital two
03:41years after, the director of this hospital said that it was only the Internet. You know,
03:48it was nothing physical. It was only the Internet. So he could work in this hospital. And this
03:54is a real problem. It shows the collective denial in this story. I mean, as far as Internet
04:04is concerned, now we have hundreds and millions of videos and images that are shared of child
04:09sexual abuse violence that are shared in the world. And so we have to understand that
04:14behind those images are real crimes. So this story and this suspended sentence and the
04:21fact that this man, this doctor, was able to continue to practice shows the collective
04:26denial of all the work we have to do in order to fight with efficiency child sexual violence
04:34in France.
04:35And Mia, this trial comes just two months, of course, after Dominique Pellicot was convicted
04:40of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife. The two trials do have
04:46some similarities. Obviously, the victims here are much younger. We're talking about
04:50child abuse here. But these cases are provoking a lot of soul-searching about how France deals
04:56with allegations of abuse towards victims young or old. Do these high-profile trials
05:02actually succeed in changing attitudes, do you believe?
05:07That's a very good question. And I guess the trial of Gisèle Pellicot and the trial of
05:16Leus-Cornec in matters of child sexual violence are not the first big trials we had in France.
05:21So there's this feeling that each time there's a big trial, we think that society will understand.
05:30But those trials, even the Gisèle Pellicot trial and this trial, shows how much free
05:37are some perpetrators, how the system of impunity. I remind you that in France there are only
05:454 percent of victims of child sexual violence that are filing a report. Less than 1 percent
05:53are getting to a trial. So it shows the major impunity on those issues. And I would like
06:02that we are not waiting to have those big trials, so that society opens really its eyes
06:11on this hard reality, and that the politicians in office do take the right measures to efficiently
06:20end child sexual violence.
06:22And one of the issues you've campaigned about yourself is the statute of limitations here
06:27in France. Some of the alleged victims of this surgeon, they weren't actually able to
06:31take part in this trial, because those alleged crimes happened outside that statute of limitations.
06:37Is that something you're still campaigning to have changed?
06:41Of course. And you're speaking about survivors, because these persons are not officially victims.
06:48And those survivors will be heard in this trial. They will be heard, but they won't
06:53be acknowledged as victims. And this is a major problem. The statute of limitations
06:59is a major discrimination. It's a major injustice. It allows many criminals over the years to
07:06commit many more crimes. And this is something that we have to fight for. And I remind you
07:14that 35 countries in the world have suppressed statute of limitations, and this is very important
07:19for victims and survivors.
07:21And you yourself are a survivor of child sexual abuse. For those people who are able to take
07:28part in this trial, obviously it's going to be a very difficult few months for them, many
07:33of them completely unaware of what had happened to them until they were contacted by police.
07:38Will this trial, do you think, help them come to terms with what actually happened when
07:43they were children?
07:46I don't think we can expect any kind of healing through the just judicial system. But at least
07:56it's a judicial answer, and that is very important. And you were talking about the fact that many
08:01survivors were called by the police because this perpetrator had some notebooks in which
08:09he wrote about these crimes. And many of the survivors that are part of this trial didn't
08:16know they were actually survivors of this criminal, and they had what we call repressed
08:22memory. They didn't have the memory. They had the traumatic memory of the crime. They
08:27had all the symptoms, all the sufferings, but they didn't have the conscience of it.
08:31So first, it was a shock for them. I think they went through a very difficult path. I
08:38really hope that the judicial answer can bring some relief to them. But for survivors
08:45and victims, these kind of crimes are really long-term impact, and the judicial answer
08:53is only one answer, one aspect of the answer, one aspect of the healing. But there's also
09:01the care that those survivors need to have, and there's also societal answer that we need
09:06to give to end child sexual violence. So the judicial answer is only one aspect of
09:14the answer.
09:15And one of those groups representing child survivors, it's actually filed a complaint
09:20also against judicial authorities and the health ministry, because seemingly the hospitals
09:27that were involved in hiring the surgeon, some of them were aware of his crimes, the
09:31possession of child abuse images. So what questions need to be answered by judicial
09:37authorities and by the health ministry at that time, do you think?
09:42Absolutely. This is a very, very important... These are real work that we have to do to
09:51find answer to this collective denial. Absolutely. Because there were failure at every step of
09:57the society. As you talked about, there was the failure of some aspect of the investigation,
10:04the police investigation, failure of the health authorities, failure of the administrative
10:09authorities. So it is very important that those responsibilities are examined, and that
10:18we are better in breaking the silence before years and years, decades of a criminal path
10:28and 299 victims. This case shows that we have to make progress in the way that we end those
10:38kinds of criminals and that we end the impunity of these perpetrators.
10:42So how do we break the silence earlier? How every step of the society, every officials
10:51that are responsible or every authorities that are controlling those doctors or teachers,
10:57when it's teachers, how do we make the report system better in France? This is a very important
11:05question.
11:06Mia, thank you so much for being with us on the programme this evening. We really appreciate
11:09your time and your insight. That is Mia Koayama, co-founder of the Brave Movement here in France.
11:17Thank you so much.
11:19Well, that's it from us.