When French surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec was found guilty of decades of sexual crimes last month, those he abused felt vindicated.
But that feeling quickly evaporated when the sentence was announced.
Despite the scope and seriousness of Dr. Le Scouarnec’s crimes, he received a term of just 20 years – the maximum allowed since consecutive sentences are forbidden under French law.
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In France, criminals generally serve their sentences concurrently, not consecutively. That’s making the victims of Joël Le Scouarnec, who committed hundreds of sexual assaults, unhappy with the outcome of his trial.
The outcome is not a surprise to French lawyers. But the country currently faces a broad social reckoning over sexual abuse of women and children. The lenient sentencing in this and other recent high-profile cases is sharpening scrutiny over whether the French legal system is sufficiently meting out justice for the innocent and vulnerable.
“It doesn’t make sense to put someone in prison for 200 years,” says Margaux Castex, a Bordeaux-based lawyer who represented one client in the Le Scouarnec trial. “We can, however, imagine changing the laws specifically around sexual abuse crimes.
“But it’s very difficult to change laws and mentalities in France. Anytime we want to change something, people go into the streets in protest and have this feeling of persecution.”
The goals of prison
Dr. Le Scouarnec was found guilty on May 28 of assaulting and raping 299 former patients – most of whom were children at the time – during his 25-year practice. But under the terms of his 20-year sentence, he could be eligible for parole in just over five years – and the judge turned down the victims’ request to hold him in a special detention center after he finishes his sentence.
Many victims say that isn’t enough.
“It’s incomprehensible,” says David Boureau, who joined a civil suit against Dr. Le Scouarnec after being molested by him as an 8-year-old. “We really thought things would go in a different direction.”
That has stirred some legal experts to push for reforms to strengthen the punishment around particularly repugnant crimes like those of Dr. Le Scouarnec and Dominique Pelicot, who also recently received 20 years for drugging his wife and sexually abusing her – and inviting more than 50 other men to do so – for a decade.
The prosecution in the Le Scouarnec trial told the courts that in the United States, the doctor’s crimes could have resulted in prison time of “2,000 years.” Indeed, the U.S. legal system allows for the accumulation of prison sentences for each plaintiff within a single case.
In 2018, Larry Nassar, the former physician to the U.S. women’s national gymnastics team, was sentenced to up to 235 years in prison for sexually assaulting at least 265 young women under the guise of treatment.
But the French legal system forbids cumulative sentences under a 1994 law, and instead treats all crimes committed as a single infraction, even when there are multiple victims involved with a case. The logic behind such thinking is to avoid disproportionate or excessive sentences and to ensure fairness in how sentences are applied.
Part of the reasoning goes back to the foundations of the French legal system, which has tried to distance itself from the Catholic Church ever since a 1905 law was signed to separate church and state. In that, there was a desire to make sure the law was not used to provide moral lessons – even to criminals.
“The idea was that not all convicted criminals had the right to reenter society, but they could hope to do so,” says Nicolas Nayfeld, a professor of legal philosophy at the University of Jean Moulin Lyon 3. “What’s inhumane is to take away that possibility.”
Since the 19th century, French prison has been a place of penance and punitive action. Work inside prison walls was assigned as a form of retribution. There was little written about how to help those serving time reenter society after their sentence, and people came out without jobs or family support, often returning to delinquency.
As time moved on, French law evolved. Prison time became something used to ensure public order and dissuade future crime, with a renewed push toward social rehabilitation. In 2009, a law was passed to require all people behind bars to engage in some kind of rehabilitation, be it through work, professional training, or sociocultural activities.
But French prisons continue to struggle with effectively returning imprisoned individuals to society after their sentences. And advocates say extending time behind bars won’t solve long-term challenges, like a lack of rehabilitation resources and increasing problems of prison overcapacity – France has the third-highest level in Europe at 129.5%.
“If you’re living in 9 square meters with three or four inmates and can’t go outside for 20 years, it’s still a very long time,” says Prune Missoffe, the advocacy and analysis director at the French branch of the International Observatory of Prisons in Paris. “Already, there aren’t enough resources available like psychologists or addiction counselors to ensure people can make a life for themselves once they get out. … It definitely makes us wonder about the goal of prison.”
“There are other solutions”
Some observers have brushed off controversy over the sentences of Dr. Le Scouarnec and Mr. Pelicot, saying 20 years is enough because both men are in their 70s. But victims groups say that, without fundamental changes to sentencing laws for sexual offenders, it is difficult to ensure public order in the long run.
“We need to create separate legislation for sexual assault crimes. We can’t put all criminals in the same basket,” says Francesca Satta, a lawyer who represented numerous victims within the civil suit against Dr. Le Scouarnec. “Prison is not adaptable to every type of criminal. There are other solutions.”
Ms. Satta is part of a working group with legislators to create a bill that would impose a life sentence on those convicted of sexually abusing minors. Life sentences are still used sparingly here – most often reserved for serial killers or crimes involving multiple counts of murder, kidnapping, or sexual assault. While the U.S. average prison sentence for homicide is 40.6 years, it is 6.1 years for France.
Ms. Satta has also advocated for creating more halfway houses like Le Refuge, which she opened in 2010 for young men ages 18 to 25, to receive socio-psychiatric care while serving out their sentences. There are currently only a handful of such structures in France and only one medical-surveillance center – which victims requested for Dr. Le Scouarnec – for those who must be detained beyond their sentence.
Looking ahead, Dr. Le Scouarnec and Mr. Pelicot will be subject to increased surveillance once they leave prison, and will be registered as sex offenders with the national police. Dr. Le Scouarnec and a majority of the 51 men convicted in the Pelicot case will be required to undergo psychiatric treatment as part of their sentence.
That’s a start, say victims groups. They’re still concerned about a loophole in French law, which allows a new sentence to absorb a previous one, and for convicts to ask for early release after serving two-thirds of their sentence. Due to a previous sexual abuse conviction in 2017, Dr. Le Scouarnec will be eligible for parole in the early 2030s.
But legal experts say an early release is extremely unlikely. There has been increased public pressure since the #MeToo movement and the Pelicot case to be tough on sexual assault crimes.
For now, victims say the priority is to remove the statute of limitations on sexual assault crimes, which is currently set at 20 years, or 30 years for crimes against minors. There has been talk of a new trial against Le Scouarnec for additional victims who currently have no way to seek justice.
“This was one of the major battlegrounds within the trial for us [victims], to make sure all victims can come forward,” says Mr. Boureau. “There’s still a lot of anger.”
