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.
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