His name was in a newspaper of child abuse

This story contains distressing details from the beginning.

When Mauricette Vinet talks about her grandson, her voice heats up with affection.

“He was a lovely child. He had a strong personality, sure! But he always thought about others, he always asked if he could help,” says the French retiree, in his 80 years.

“He loved being in the garden with his grandfather, collecting green beans. He was a lovely child, Mathis,” he adds.

“But, as you know, there was a ‘before’, and there was a ‘after'”.

Mauricette and her husband Roland are among the 267 plaintiffs who have pressed charges against Joël Le Scouarnec, the former French surgeon accused of abusing almost 300 people, mostly children and almost all their patients, during the course of several decades. The trial began in Vannes, Brittany, Monday.

Le Scouarnec and Mathis only crossed once, when Mathis, 10, was hospitalized during the night at the clinic in the small French northwest city of Quimperlé. Le Scouarnec, a respected and modern gastroenterologist, told Mathis that the child had to be maintained during the night for controls.

It turned out that Mathis only had stomach pain, and was sent home the next day. But Mauricette is convinced that the brief stay at the hospital changed Mathis forever.

“The concern was established, little by little. It happened gradually in the first year; then he stopped being happy and became aggressive with everyone,” he tells the BBC.

There is no way to conclude if Mathis’s problems were linked to surgeon. What is certain is that in his adolescence, Mathis distanced himself from his family and began using increasingly hard drugs; Later, time in detoxification and rehabilitation centers spent.

Then, in 2018, the police knocked on their door.

They told him that a man named Joël Le Scouarnec had been arrested the previous year for violating his six -year -old neighbor. During a search in the surgeon’s house, the police discovered batteries of newspapers and hard drives in which Le Scouarnec seemed to list hundreds of more victims. Mathis’s name was among them.

Mauricette said that Mathis told his police and then read an excerpt from the newspaper, which seemed to detail the abuse of his Scauarnec inflicted him during his hospital stay.

“Then they left. Mathis closed the door and stayed alone, without help. And that was the beginning of a descent to hell,” says Mauricette.

The police visit helped Mathis meaning the flashbacks who had plagued him for a long time, Mauricette says: “His discomfort finally made sense; he tracked him to the source.”

Mathis pressed the charges against Le Scouarnec, but the revelations sent him by a spiral that reached an abrupt end on April 14, 2021, when Mathis overdose and died. I was 24 years old.

Mauricette and her husband pressed the charges the next day, and now appear as “indirect victims” of Le Scouarnec. They have attended the Court in Vannes, northwest of France, every day since the trial opened on Monday.

It has not been an easy listening.

The testimony of the witnesses, mostly close relatives of Le Scouarnec, now 74 years old, painted an image of an apparently ordinary middle class family that, behind the scene, has been devastated by child abuse, incest and sexual violence.

Annie, Le Scouarnec’s sister, said they had “taught to stay silent.”

This week, everything was outdoors.

The three children of Le Scouarnec gave an almost apologetic tone when they told the Court about their happy childhood with a cultured intellectual father who may not have been particularly present but was kind, patient and support.

“We had vacations, beautiful houses, everything that constitutes a normal family,” said one.

The youngest son, who said he stopped contact with Le Scouarnec in 2017 “to preserve the image of him that I have from my childhood,” he said that he now “looked at all with distrust” and never left his own child just with anyone.

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

Later, the son of the middle, a tall man of about 40 years who admitted that he was an “not totally abstinent alcoholic,” shared his memories of being abused at the hands of his paternal grandfather, Le Scouarnec’s father.

He was surprised when they first told him in court that among his father’s alleged victims were some of the friends of his childhood.

And, on Friday, an astonished silence descended on the courtroom when Le Scouarnec admitted that he had abused his granddaughter, his eldest son’s daughter when he was less than five years old. Moments after revelation, the 44 -year -old man and his partner left the room to be assisted by a psychologist.

Other witnesses caused consternation in the plaintiffs. Due to their large number, they sit in a separate room, an old university conference room, and the procedures follow through a video link.

Christian D., a friend of Le Scouarnec now 80 years, often answered questions from the court sarcastically and repeatedly minimized the events in the center of the trial, declaring that he could not “allow him to cry for everything that happened in the world.”

Later, he insisted that “he never saw anything, therefore, he had nothing to say” about the devastating accusations against his friend. When he declared that he would enjoy Le Scouarnec if he was ever to leave prison, many alleged victims in the conference room got up and left his seats.

But the most difficult thing for Mauricette and Roland was the long-awaited testimony of Marie-France L., the ex-wife of Le Scouarnec.

It has been alleged that she was in the center of the omert that reigned in the Le Scouarnec family, since she repeatedly learned of her husband’s obsession with the children, but did nothing to stop him.

Many lawyers and plaintiffs now believe that it could have prevented hundreds of children from being abused. The brother of Le Scouarnec, who was also heard this week, asked openly if he had been too much in love with the lifestyle provided by her husband’s salary to speak.

Marie-France has always denied this and, in the stand, appeared as arrogant and frequently challenging against the accusations that leveled her.

“The catastrophe has beaten: she knows that I am a pedophile,” LE Scouarnec wrote in the mid -1990s in his diary. “Maybe he was talking about his conscience,” Marie-France told the Court.

She also suggested that her five -year -old niece, which Le Scouarnec has been convicted of raping, had probably “manipulated” her husband.

“She is tortuous, that. He loves attention,” he said. Later, she complained that she was being “blamed” for everything. Only when an indecent photographic assembly was shown, Le Scouarnec made his son as a child, he looked visibly shocked.

“That was an absolute theater,” Mauricette told the BBC, adding that Christian D.’s testimony had been “vile” and that he thought Marie-France was living in “pure denial.”

While the heartbreaking events developed, Le Scouarnec sat in his box, mostly without reacting, but sometimes he stirred markedly, his voice cracked when he apologized to his children. He shuddered when extracts of his diary were read, and avoided his eyes when indecent photographs were shown from his nieces.

His lawyers have said that he admits to the “majority” of the charges against him, and that he will be explained in the course of the trial, which must last until June.

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

“Not with a gun, but he killed him,” he adds. “He will be 20 years old, but his victims … will have to live with this all their lives.

“Your prayers will be longer than yours.”

Throughout the week, in the victims hall, people went and went, but most stayed for hours every day.

As trauma and abuse descriptions arrived, a middle -aged woman covered her face with her hand and kept her there a long time.

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