Smiling broadly from behind a tree in the French port city of Saint-Nazaire, the newlyweds could not have looked more conventional.
It was June 29th, 1974 – a sunny Saturday on the Atlantic coast – and the picture shows Joël Le Scouarnec, a 23-year-old trainee surgeon, and his wife, a nursing assistant aged 20 whose maiden name was Marie-France Lhermitte.
She was the daughter of a local docker in the Chantieres de l’Alantique – one of largest shipyards in the world – while his father was a carpenter from Paris.
Ahead of the couple was a high-earning career in medicine, a 15th Century manor house they called home, and three happy and healthy sons.
Except – as a court heard this week – behind the façade of wedded bliss and professional success, there were already deep, dark secrets.
Both had allegedly experienced the vilest forms of domestic abuse from infancy, and decades of even more horrific crimes were to follow.
Le Scouarnec, now 74, is now described as the ‘the worst mass paedophile who ever lived’ and an ‘atomic bomb’ of child abuse.
On Wednesday, he was sentenced to two decades in prison – the maximum time possible under France’s archaic sexual offences laws – for raping scores of youngsters over three decades, after prosecutors referred to him as ‘a devil’.
Pictured: Joël Le Scouarnec, ‘the worst mass paedophile who ever lived’ and his wife, Marie-France Le Scouarnec, on their wedding day
On Wednesday, Le Scouarnec was sentenced to two decades in prison – the maximum time possible under France’s archaic sexual offences laws – for raping scores of youngsters over three decades, after prosecutors referred to him as ‘a devil’. Pictured: Le Scouarnec leaving court yesterday
Marie-France divorced Le Scouarnec in 2023. She has been accused of turning a blind eye to her ex-husbands crimes despite knowing she was married to an active serial paedophile. Pictured: Marie-France Le Scouarnec arrives at the Criminal Court in Vannes for the trial of Joel Le Scouarnec on February 25
Joel Le Scouarnec (pictured) admitted at least 299 horrifying crimes against victims who were mostly under the age of 15, with the youngest just four
He admitted at least 299 horrifying crimes against victims who were mostly under the age of 15, with the youngest just four.
Judge Aude Burési, sitting at the Morbihan Criminal Court, in Vannes, Brittany, sentenced Le Scouarnec after he was found guilty of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults.
The offences took place between 1989 and 2014, while other alleged crimes were not prosecuted because they happened too long ago.
During a three-month trial, the court heard how Le Scourarnec mainly abused patients while they were still under anaesthetic, or slowly waking up following operations.
It was Thomas Delaby, a barrister representing one of his victims, who told Le Scourarnec: ‘You are the worst mass paedophile who ever lived’ and ‘an atomic bomb of paedophilia. Your victims will never forgive you.’
Such words certainly added to the anger and emotion of Le Scourarnec’s trial, but so too did those of his wife, who only finally divorced him in 2023.
Judge Aude Burési, sitting at the Morbihan Criminal Court, in Vannes, Brittany, sentenced Le Scouarnec after he was found guilty of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults. Pictured: A court sketch of Joel Le Scouarnec
There are now growing calls for Madame Le Scouarnec herself to be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a long-term criminal
Marie-France Le Scouarnec caused outrage by insulting victims during cross-examination, and also allegedly lying repeatedly.
The most serious accusation against her was that she knew full well she was married to an active serial paedophile, but turned a blind eye to his depravity.
There are now growing calls for Madame Le Scouarnec herself to be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a long-term criminal.
To try and understand why, we need to go back to that June day more than half-a-century ago, when the Le Scouarnec’s seemed to have the world at their feet.
Le Scouarnec had ‘pledged to become a surgeon from the age of ten’, he said, and Marie-France was equally committed to caring for the sick.
Both were determined to rise up the social scale, serving the public in a manner that would earn them huge respect, both within France’s national health service, and from their large extended families.
Le Scouarnec was a rising star in his chosen profession who had met his future wife at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, in the centre of Paris.
Following their wedding, they moved out to the countryside around Nantes, on the west coast of France, to start married life together.
Le Scouarnec had ‘pledged to become a surgeon from the age of ten’, he said, and Marie-France was equally committed to caring for the sick
Le Scouarnec specialised in digestive surgery, and he was soon much in demand in local hospitals and medical centres.
There were tensions in the couple’s relationship from day one, however – most caused by abuse in earlier life, defence lawyers told the court.
Marie-France Le Scouarnec claimed she was raped by two uncles, while Le Scouarnec said his childhood home in the Paris suburbs was a hotbed of illegal acts, including incestuous ones.
As a married couple, the Scouarnecs made a manor house in Loches, south of Tours, their principal family home.
Madame Le Scouarnec focused on bringing up their boys – Fabien, Florian and Renan – while also organising a busy social life, which included regular dinner parties.
Le Scouarnec admitted he was already consumed by ‘dark impulses’ at the time, and a young relative on his wife’s side of the family was ‘the trigger’.
He told investigators in recorded interviews: ‘My attraction to young children began with my niece, it must have been in 1985 or 1986.
‘She was very affectionate, she would come and sit on my lap. My relationship with my wife was deteriorating. I transferred my sexuality onto this little girl. She was the trigger.’
Le Scouarnec specialised in digestive surgery, and he was soon much in demand in local hospitals and medical centres
The niece – referred to in court by the pseudonym of Nathalie – was soon being regularly abused by Le Scouarnec at the Loches house, the court heard.
The child was the daughter of Sylvie, Madame Le Scouarnec’s own sister in Saint-Nazaire, and it appeared that both women knew exactly what was going on.
Sylvie later tried to justify her silence by a ‘psychological blockage’ linked to her past, which included being sexual assaulted as a child.
Back at Le Scouarnec’s immediate family home, affairs took place in the marital bed, with Madame Le Scouarnec ‘making advances’ towards her husband’s own brother, Patrick Le Scouarnec, as early as 1983.
Marie-France Le Scouarnec also discovered a cupboard filled with child pornography magazines and child-sized dolls which were being used for sexual gratification, but she did not report them to the authorities.
Joël Le Scouarnec was relegated to a small bedroom at the local hospital where he was working.
‘I didn’t see the point of divorce,’ he said. ‘Given what I was, I wasn’t going to start my life over again.’
Patrick Le Scouarnec, the now 70-year-old brother of the surgeon, agreed that Madame Le Scouarnec was a consummate liar.
‘There is another person who could have ensured that my brother was arrested – it is his wife, Marie-France,’ he said.
Le Scouarnec admitted he was already consumed by ‘dark impulses’ at the time, and a young relative on his wife’s side of the family was ‘the trigger’. Pictured: Maxime Tessier, lawyer of Le Scouarnec and Le Scouarnec
The home of Le Scouarnec in Jonzac, a village in south west France, close to the world-famous brandy-producing region of Cognac
He said that Marie-France Le Scouarnec ‘loved her husband’s salary,’ but preferred to sleep with other men, including family members. In turn, Marie-France Le Scouarnec constantly claimed ‘I knew nothing,’ despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
‘I wondered how I could have not noticed anything,’ Ms Le Scouarnec told the court. ‘It’s a terrible betrayal that he committed against me and my children.’
But Madame Le Scouarnec’s sister confirmed this was not true, saying Marie-France Le Scouarnec had at one point shouted: ‘But all men love little girls.’
Madame Le Scouarnec even called Nathalie – the neice abused by Le Scouarnec – a ‘devious little girl,’ who ‘hung around Joël’s neck so as to blackmail him’.
By the year 2000, Joël Le Scouarnec’s sister, Annie, had also learned from one of her 10-year-old daughters that she too had been sexually assaulted by her brother.
‘I was taught to keep quiet at a very young age,’ Annie said in court, while saying Marie-France Le Scouarnec certainly knew ‘all about’ her husband’s paedophilia.
A letter handwritten by Madame Le Scouarnec in 2010 that was also entered as evidence read: ‘I ask you to please protect my youngest son, the only one who does not know his father’s past.’
This was seven years before detectives arrested Le Scouarnec in connection with offences against minors.
In December 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years for the sexual abuse of four girls: a six-year-old neighbour, a four-year-old patient, and two of his own nieces, who were also four when the abuse started.
In comments that have been published and broadcast across France, victims called for Marie-France Le Scouarnec to be prosecuted.
Marie-Caroline Arrighi, a spokesman for four victims, said outside court: ‘She knew. Marie-France Le Scouarnec knew and protected her husband.’
Calling the couple ‘evil,’ Ms Arrighi added: ‘Reporting sexual crimes and offenses against minors is a legal obligation.’
The Lorient public prosecutor’s office has opened two new investigations into Le Scouarnec’s professional career, which ended in 2017.
They include ‘possibly unidentified and newly reported victims’ of sexual abuse and rape.
But when Le Scouarnec next appears in the dock, he is likely to repeat his long-term claim that the woman with whom he shared his life with over decades was oblivious to his crimes.
It is a tactic that has only increased suspicion around Marie-France Le Scouarnec, especially as she is now the only family member who visits him in prison.
Her divorce settlement in 2023 included her getting the couple’s house, along with a generous pension worth the equivalent of around £2200-a- month, and power of attorney over their bank accounts.
When a prosecutor asked in court if this was ‘the price of silence’ for so many decades when he could have been caught, Le Scouarnec replied: ‘She was my wife.’
