A 74-year-old former French physician who admitted to raping hundreds of his patients between 1989 and 2014 was given a 20-year prison sentence. Both boys and girls made up the majority of the victims. The surgeon admitted to raping his granddaughter throughout the trial, and he also did the same to his 5-year-old niece in 1985.
 
For the rape and sexual assault of four children, including two nieces, the convicted individual, Joël Le Scouarnec, is currently serving a 15-year jail sentence.

Documented his crimes
The most recent trial stems from a 2017 complaint filed by the father of a 6-year-old neighbor against Le Scouarnec for inappropriately touching and exposing himself in front of their daughter via the fence between their homes.
 
More than 300,000 photographs, 650 pedophilic, zoophilic, and scatological video clips, and notebooks where Le Scouarnec identified himself as a pedophile and detailed the horrifying details of his past crimes were discovered by authorities during the surgeon's house search.

One of the most important pieces of evidence used in the trial was the journals Le Scouarnec kept, which contained detailed descriptions of his actions and the names of his targets.
 
By passing off sexual abuse as "medical care," the surgeon was able to take advantage of his teenage patients when they were alone in their hospital rooms or when they were unlikely to recall the abuse following "medical care."

Victims were the 'destination of fantasies'
According to the AP, Le Scouarnec apologized for his misdeeds during the trial but maintained his composure and emotionlessness.
 
"They didn't seem like people to me. They were where my dreams were taking me. He told the court, "As the trial progressed, I started to see them as individuals, with emotions, anger, suffering, and distress."
 
"That's just who I am; I don't display emotion.  "I don't express it, but that doesn't mean I don't feel it," Le Scouarnec continued.

Prosecutor blames French bureaucracy
The Brittany trial, according to AP, concludes one of the biggest child sex abuse cases in French history, but it also raises concerns about how a pedophile physician was allowed to carry out such atrocities for twenty years. There were 158 boys and 141 girls among the surgeon's 299 fatalities.
 
Last Friday, at the trial, Le Scouarnec was referred to by the prosecution as "a devil in a white coat." The French bureaucracy was partially held accountable for the murder by prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger.  Despite a 2005 conviction for importing and possessing child sexual abuse materials, the surgeon was permitted to practice until his arrest in 2017.
 
"Should Joël Le Scouarnec have been the only one in the defendant's box?"  Kellenberger asked the court.  

Le Scouarnec served four months in prison in 2005, yet the following year he was hired as a hospital practitioner. Rights organizations have criticized the government for its lack of action, claiming that no steps were made to restrict the convicted person's access to children or suspend his medical license.
 
The victims, whose identities were derived from Le Scouarnec's diary, expressed dissatisfaction about what they regarded to be a lack of focus throughout the trial.  Before the ruling, two of them passed away.
 
"This trial, which could have served as an open-air laboratory to expose the serious failings of our institutions, seems to leave no mark on the government, the medical community, or society at large," a victim group said in a statement.