The punishment of the productive French pedophile has victims fired

The victims of productive French pedophile Joel Le Scouarnec have expressed their dismay that the 20 -year prison sentence of the former surgeon does not include preventive detention – which means that he could be released from prison in the early 2030s.

The 74-year-old was found guilty of the sexual abuse of hundreds of people, most of them minor patients of him, more than decades.

In the course of the trial, he had known for the committing of 111 rape crimes and 188 sexual attacks, and was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors – who called Le Scouarnec “A Devil in A White Coat” – had asked the court to take the extremely rare provision to keep him in a center for treatment and supervision, even after release, called preventive detention.

But the judge rejected this requirement and claimed the age of Le Scouarnec and his “desire to make it right” was taken into account.

Le Scouarnec will have to serve two -thirds of his sentence before he is eligible for conditional release.

But because he has served for seven years because of an earlier conviction for the rape and sexual abuse of four children, he can be eligible for conditional release by 2032.

His lawyer, Maxime Tessier, pointed out that saying Le Scouarnec could then be released “inaccurate”, because conditional release is not a release.

But his victims – many of whom are diligently attended the three -month trial in Vannes, North France – regret the punishment.

“For a raid you risk 30 years. But the punishment for hundreds of rapes of children is lighter?” A victim told Le Monde.

The president of a child’s interest group, Solène Podevin Favre, said she expected that the verdict would “be less flexible” and would include a preventive detention after the sentence.

“It is certainly the maximum sentence,” she said. “But it is the least we could have hoped for. But in six years he could be released. It will be amazing.”

Marie Grimaud, one of the lawyers representing the victims, said reporters that although she understood “intellectually” the verdict, “symbolic” that she could not.

Another lawyer, Francesca Satta, said she thought that 20 years was short, given the number of victims in the case.

“It’s time for the law to change so that we can have more suitable sentences,” she argued.

But in her opinion read to the court, Judge Aude Burési said, although the court “had perfectly heard the demands of the claimants that Le Scouarnec should never be released from prison, the demagogic and imaginative would be to make them believe that would be possible”.

“In fact,” she added, “the rule of law does not allow this to happen.”

One of the victims of Le Scouarnec, Amélie Lévêque, said that the verdict had “shocked” her and that she would have liked to impose preventive detention. ‘How many victims would it take? Thousand?’

She argued that French law had to change and allow stricter penalties to take the serial nature of crimes into account.

Similar complaints were collected in the aftermath of the Pelicot process last December, in which Dominique Pelicot was found guilty of drying and raping his wife, Gisèle, and recruited dozens of men to abuse her almost a decade.

Pelicot was too sentenced to 20 years – the maximum punishment for rape in French law – with the obligation to serve at least two -thirds in prison.

However, his case will have to be investigated again at the end of the prison sentence before the issue of preventive detention can be investigated.

In France, sentences are not operated successively. Public public prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger noticed last week that Le Scouarnec was tried in the US – where people are sentenced to one prison sentence after another – he may have had a prison sentence of more than 4,000 years.

But Cécile de Oliveira, one of the victims’ lawyers, praised the punishment, of which she said it was “fine” tailored to the “psychiatric state of Le Scouarnec”.

She agreed with the decision of the court not to impose preventive detention on the former surgeon, and added: “It must remain a completely exceptional punishment.”

After the judgment was read, victims, journalists and lawyers mixed outside the courthouse in Vannes. Many of the civilian parties and their family members, angry about the verdict, brought their frustration to the media.

“The only thing I ask is that this man can no longer insult,” the mother of a victim told French points of sale.

“If this kind of behavior has to entail a life sentence, it is that way.”