ClueTrail
Uncovering forgotten cases, chilling mysteries, and overlooked truths from around the world. From hidden histories to modern investigations and unsettling disappearances, each episode follows the clues...wherever they lead.
ClueTrail
Joël Le Scouarnec: A Hidden Life Exposed
Behind the white coat of respectability lurked one of Europe's most prolific predators. The ClueTrail podcast dives deep into the harrowing case of Joël Le Scouarnec, a French surgeon whose decades of abuse remained hidden until the brave words of a six-year-old girl finally exposed the truth.
What makes this case particularly devastating is how many warning signs were ignored. Despite a 2005 conviction for possession of child abuse materials, Le Scouarnec received only a four-month suspended sentence and was allowed to continue practicing medicine. Hospitals prioritized his surgical skills over patient safety, colleagues noticed odd behaviors but remained silent, and a culture of institutional neglect created the perfect environment for his crimes to continue unchecked. For many survivors, justice came decades too late, with some only learning they had been victimized when investigators knocked on their doors with pages from the surgeon's diaries.
Dive into this powerful episode that examines how institutions fail to protect the vulnerable and how the courage of survivors finally brought decades of hidden abuse into the light. Subscribe and share your thoughts on this devastating case that changed how France approaches medical oversight and child protection.
Welcome to ClueTrail, the place where we follow the paths of crimes and mysteries that still leave questions behind. Tonight we're in France where, in 2017, a six-year-old girl confided in her parents that their neighbour, a retired surgeon, had done something unthinkable. Surgeon had done something unthinkable. That disclosure set off an investigation that revealed one of Europe's most prolific predators, dr Joël Le Scouarnec. A man once trusted as a surgeon later was exposed through hundreds of pages of diaries detailing decades of wrongdoings. This is the story of Joël Le Scouarnec, the surgeon who hid in plain sight. Joël Le Scouarnec was born on 3rd of December 1950, in Paris. In Villebonne-sur-Yvette, a quiet suburb south of the capital, his father, joseph, was a carpenter and his mother, jeanne, was a homemaker. Joël was the eldest of three children, with a younger brother named Patrick and a sister, annie. In his late teens, he began studying medicine in Paris, the historic Hotel du Hospital, and by the mid-1970s he had moved west to complete an internship at the Nantes Faculty of Medicine before choosing to specialize in gastrointestinal surgery. By all accounts, he was seen as ambitious, intelligent and competent in his field. In 1974, he married Marie-France Lhermitte, a healthcare assistant, and the couple went on to have three sons. They appeared to build the image of a respectable family. He was a surgeon with a promising career, a wife also in the medical field and three perfect children. But years later in court, joël Lescournaix would say that his darker impulses began to surface only around the age of 35. It was in those years that he first acted within his own family, targeting his young niece.
Speaker 1:The first real warnings about Joël Lescournec didn't come in 2017, when the case finally broke open. They actually came much earlier, in 2005, whilst he was working at a hospital in the small town of Lox. French investigators were alerted by the FBI after an international inquiry into a Russian child abuse site had uncovered payments linked to Lesquanek and, acting on that information, french police searched his computer. What they found was extremely troubling. They uncovered many explicit videos involving children, and it was also that same year when two young children accused him of indecent assault. So Joël Lescournay was then prosecuted, convicted and given a light punishment of just four months suspended sentence.
Speaker 1:Comparing it to today's standards, the idea that an accused child molester who was caught with such explicit material could receive such a light sentence it's astonishing, but at the time, france's justice system often treated this kind of offences leniently. Possession of child pornography could be punished with suspended sentences rather than jail, especially for first-time offenders. Rather than jail, especially for first-time offenders. Courts sometimes framed it as a moral failing rather than a direct danger to the public and the hospitals Well. They were known to often handle issues internally. Usually, a surgeon with a conviction might face a temporary suspension or none at all, especially if administrators judged him still useful to the hospital. In Joël Lescournec's case, the conviction was treated more as an embarrassing mark on an otherwise respected career, not as clear evidence that patients or children might be at risk. So he was free to carry on.
Speaker 1:Through the following decade, he continued to wear his white coat, operate and visit patients on hospital wards. All the while, his secret life was still unfolding in darkness. It was November 2017 when the first real crack appeared in Joël Le Scouarnec carefully maintained façade. Now, at the age of 67, he was divorced and living by himself. He was retired now and he lived in a complete squalor in a house full with clutter and rubbish Next door to what would later be called the House of Horrors.
Speaker 1:A young family moved in. They had two children, a girl and a boy. They were aware of the strange habits of their neighbor, the retired surgeon who sometimes wandered naked in his garden and lived in obvious disorder. But nothing about him ever made them feel uneasy when they crossed paths. For all appearances he was simply an eccentric old man. And then came the words that shattered the impression of him. Their six-year-old daughter told him something no parent ever wants to hear. Their neighbor, she said, had behaved inappropriately towards her, exposing himself through the fence and then even touching her inappropriately.
Speaker 1:The horrified parents went straight to the police and luckily her testimony was taken extremely serious and within days investigators arrived at the neighbour's home to begin a search. What they uncovered inside would stun even the most seasoned investigator. In cupboards, drawers and boxes, police found a disturbing collection with hundreds of explicit images and videos involving children. Alongside these files they found dozens of notebooks filled, cover to cover, in Le Scouarnec own handwriting. They weren't just simple diaries recording the passing of days. No, they were meticulous records where, page after page, he had written down accounts of abuse in thousands of entries stretching across decades. Some entries even had names or initials or even brief descriptions, and in total, investigators would later estimate that the notebooks pointed to more than 300 victims.
Speaker 1:At first, detectives did not know if these writings were fantasy or confessions. So they began the most obvious task notebooks aligned with real children in real places and in real situations. The scale of what they had stumbled upon was unlike anything they had seen before was unlike anything they had seen before, and what began with the words of a six-year-old girl in Jonzac had opened a window into decades of hidden abuse by a man who, for most of his life, had been trusted to heal you. Among all the evidence recovered from Joël Le Squarnac's home, it was the notebooks that struck investigators the hardest. There were dozens of them in which he had documented his life in extraordinary detail. In which he had documented his life in extraordinary detail, especially the entries depicting the abuse he inflicted to his young patients. Investigators counted more than 300 potential victims within these pages, and while some entries described situations that could be traced to real people and places, others were harder to pin down. Some of the entries pointed back to the earliest years when he crossed the line within his own family, and testimony later revealed that one of his nieces was amongst the first to suffer at his hands. Other entries were connected to his time as a surgeon, where hospitals that should have been places of healing became instead part of his hunting ground, he would prowl within the hospitals where he worked and at times even during surgeries when colleagues weren't paying attention, which is horrific to think about. The risks he took were extraordinary. He literally hid in plain sight. Literally hid in plain sight. Experts later said it was rare to encounter such a vast self-written archive of offending, and for prosecutors, the notebooks became central to the case. They were not just journals. They were evidence that this was not a man who had acted on impulse a handful of times, but someone who had lived a double life over decades and who had systematically recorded it as he went.
Speaker 1:For nearly two years, the investigation into Joël Le Scouarnec moved quietly. Detectives shifted notebooks, matched entries to real people and began building each of the cases and in 2019, the scale of what they uncovered came to light. The scale of what they uncovered came to light. The French media went into a frenzy. A respected surgeon, already convicted once for child pornography, was now suspected of abusing hundreds of children across several decades. The headlines were alarming. Kids, the headlines were alarming. Some newspapers even called him France's biggest pedophile, whilst others focused on the horrors of the diaries, dubbing them the Black Notebooks.
Speaker 1:The public reaction was overwhelming and families who had once known him as their doctor, their neighbor or even a family friend suddenly began to question every memory. Many former patients came forward and some recognized details in the notebooks that matched their own childhood experiences. Investigators also reached out to those they could identify from the diaries and delivered the devastating news. The idea that one day police might knock on your door and tell you that you had endured something so disturbing as a child, perhaps with no memory of it. It's a nightmare almost beyond comprehension. The lives this man destroyed, even decades after the abuse had stopped, are impossible to measure. Are impossible to measure.
Speaker 1:After the initial shock and disbelief, public attention and anger turned to the authorities and the hospitals. How could a man who had already been convicted in 2005 have been allowed to continue operating, to keep working with families and children? The revelations ignited national debates about medical oversight in France, about leniency within the justice system and about the silence and failures that had allowed him to keep practicing. Allowed him to keep practising. Victims and their families spoke out, demanding to know why nothing had been done sooner. Colleagues who had worked with him admitted on the oath that when rumours of his past circulated, they chose not to act, saying at one point it wasn't our problem.
Speaker 1:The Guardian described the case as exposing decades of failures in medical oversight, while medical journals like the Lancet called for institutional reforms so that no one could slip through the cracks in this way again, that no one could slip through the cracks in this way again. And, of course, this scandal imminently reached the political stage as well, with both the public and many members of parliament demanding to know how a convicted surgeon could have been allowed to keep treating patients. In response, government ministers blamed this oversight on the regulations that existed in France at that time, where disciplinary actions were left entirely to hospitals and medical boards and convictions did not trigger suspensions or removal from the medical registry. So, in their view, it was in that climate of silence and inaction from the hospital board that allowed him to go on a prowl unchecked decades and destroy countless lives. They promised reforms to straighten oversight in hospitals and to ensure that disciplinary warnings would no longer be ignored.
Speaker 1:By the time the case reached its first trial in 2020, the scandal had already grown into more than just a story of one sick man. It was a moment of truth for the Charente-Maritime region and this was the first triale-Maritime region, and this was the first trial to emerge from the investigation. It was focused on four victims identified in Jonzac and nearby towns, including the six-year-old girl whose disclosure had first brought the case to light. Alongside her were three of his own relatives, who had carried the secret of their tragedy for years before finally being heard. The courtroom became the stage not only for his crimes, but also for the voices that had been ignored for far too long.
Speaker 1:Joël Lescourneq sat quietly in the dock, often staring at the floor, and when he did speak, his words were described as clinical and almost detached. He did admit to some of the acts, but insisted that many of his writings were nothing more than fantasies. Prosecutors described him as dangerous, manipulative and beyond rehabilitation. They pointed to his 2005 conviction as proof that warnings had been ignored and argued that his offences showed a clear pattern of a time. His defence lawyers took the opposite line, saying that he was a broken man, frail and diminished, and that his notebooks were filled as much with fantasies as with fact. They asked the court to see him as ill rather than purely criminal. The court rejected that view and found him guilty of the sexual abuse of four children, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Speaker 1:For many, the verdict was just the beginning, because the scale of allegations in the black notebooks suggested that four victims were just the surface of something far larger. The families of other potential victims pressed for answers, asking why their cases were not included and why he was only being tried for a handful of charges. Judges explained that French law requires cases to be handled step by step, victim by victim, and so the 2020 trial was simply the first, and, with Joël Esquanek already behind bars, where he could no longer harm another child, prosecutors and investigators embarked on a five-year process of gathering evidence, cross-checking the notebooks and preparing a case that would finally confront the full scale of his offending. The 2020 conviction did not close the book on Joël Lescournec. In fact, in many ways, it only opened it further.
Speaker 1:Almost as soon as the first trial ended, a dedicated team of investigators across France began the enormous task of combing through the black notebooks. Began the enormous task of combing through the black notebooks. Each entry was studied, each name or initial checked against hospital records, school lists and neighbourhood records. It was a slow process, often stretching over months, but investigators knew they had to keep going, step by step, if there was ever to be justice. And once investigators confirmed the entries and began knocking on doors, the impact on victims and their families was sudden and devastating, because many only discovered the connection when police arrived with pages from the journals in hand. One survivor, marie, now a mother of three, later said I couldn't think they were talking about me. It's like cancer, you think it only happens to other people. Another survivor recalled the moment police showed her the entry linked to her, describing how she saw her own name and details written in Le Scouarnec hand, and said simply it was disgusting.
Speaker 1:For many survivors, the discovery reopened wounds they had carried for years. One grandmother remembered how her grandson changed after being admitted to hospital and treated by Le Scouarnec, saying he was no longer the happy child they had known but became withdrawn and closed off, struggling for years, and then years later the police knocked at their door. She later said when the police told him what they knew, it was hell for him. The sky fell on his head. Many survivors recounted that the moment they were told their names appeared in the journals and for some even reading the pages themselves was incredibly painful. It meant moving from not knowing to suddenly facing the most horrific of truths. For others. It confirmed what they had long known but carried silently for years, and for all of them it was traumatic once more. By 2021 and 2022, the number of confirmed victims had grown, expanding into dozens spread across the regions where he had worked, and with each new confirmation, the same question was raised of how a man with a criminal record had been able to move from hospital to hospital without serious intervention Behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:Prosecutors were preparing for the trial, which would be broader and more complex than the first, a trial that would finally reflect the scale of what the black notebooks had revealed. But preparing for something at this scale would take time, time which, for survivors and their families, would have been agonizing organizing. In February 2025, the case of Joël Le Scouarnec returned to court. This time it was in Vannes, a region of Brittany. The trial was unlike anything France had ever seen before was unlike anything France had ever seen before. On the docket were accusations involving dozens of children, spread across several decades and multiple regions where Le Scouarnec had worked. The charges reflected only a fraction of what the black notebooks described, but still the case was vast, so vast, in fact, that French media called it the largest pedophilia trial in the country's history.
Speaker 1:The courthouse was placed under heavy security and the media presence was constant. Survivors now, ranging from teenagers to middle-aged adults, sat alongside their families for the duration of the trial. Some found the strength to testify in person, while others spoke from behind screens or had their words read aloud by lawyers. Spoke from behind screens or had their words read aloud by lawyers, but what was certain was that for many, it was the first time their voices had been heard and their experiences at the hand of this man taken seriously. Joël Le Scouarnec himself appeared older, frailer than in 2020, but he remained unsettlingly detached. Experts described him as a man with an exceptionally concentrated set of sexual perversions, deeply rooted and resistant to treatment. Deeply rooted and resistant to treatment.
Speaker 1:This trial revealed not only the scale of his crimes, but also the failures of those around him, the colleagues and the institutions that had allowed him to continue unchecked for decades. Some of his relatives spoke of a culture of silence within the family, where one was taught very young to keep quiet, and that silence, they said, had hung over them for generations. His ex-wife, marie-france, also took the stand and told the court she had never suspected anything, insisting there was nothing in their home life that pointed to such crimes and she denied ever noticing the dolls, the images or even the notebooks that investigators later uncovered. But her words were challenged by members of her own family, with his brother, patrick, saying she could have known, but she chose to stay quiet because of the lifestyle that Skwarnek was providing for the family. This was echoed by his sister, annie, who accused her of knowing about abuse within the family and failing to act.
Speaker 1:The trial also brought new revelations about abuse within the wider family, with one of his sons testifying that he had been abused by his grandfather, joel's father, that he had been abused by his grandfather, joel's father. He was clear, however, in saying that Joel himself had never touched him. Then former colleagues came to testify, admitting that they had felt uneasy about his eccentric behavior, but insisting they never had proof strong enough to act. In the end, prosecutors argued that it was this web of silence, the family secrets, the colleagues who stayed silent, the hospitals that failed to act and the willingness of many to overlook warning signs simply because they valued having a skilled surgeon on their staff that allowed this predator to hurt so many children for literally decades. The defense, for its part, tried to argue that Joël Le Scouarnec was a sick and isolated man consumed by his fantasies, and once more they urged the court to see him through the lens of illness rather than pure criminal intent. But their words carried little weight against the overwhelming evidence and the testimonies of so many. And after weeks of testimonies, evidence and painful accounts, the court reached its conclusion.
Speaker 1:In March 2025, joel Le Scouarnec was convicted of the sexual abuse of 299 children and adolescents. The charges did not cover every name in the black notebooks not even close, but the court found enough evidence to establish a long, consistent pattern of offending that stretched across decades. He was sentenced to 20 more years in prison, added to the 15-year term from 2020. At his age, it meant he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. When the verdict was read, a heavy silence fell over the courtroom. Some survivors wept quietly, while others sat motionless, absorbing the weight of a judgment that had taken years, sometimes decades, to arrive. For families, it was a moment of both relief and frustration. Relief that justice had finally been spoken, but frustration that so many names from the notebooks would never be brought before court.
Speaker 1:Outside the court, reactions were mixed. Victim advocacy groups welcomed the ruling as a rare moment when the French system fully recognized the scale of child abuse. Media described it as reckoning, but, frankly, one that had come far too late. For the survivors, the trial was less about the man himself and more about being heard. One lawyer representing multiple victims said it plainly "'This is not about Joël Le Scouarnec. "'it is about the silence that protected him'". To be continued, the case of Joël Esquarnac was the largest of its kind in France, and its impact will be felt for years. It showed how institutions, colleagues and, at times, families, all missed the chance to stop him. If you'd like to hear more episodes like this, you can support us on Patreon for bonus content and exclusive series. Support us on Patreon for bonus content and exclusive series. Also, follow us on Instagram and TikTok for updates, and don't forget. A quick rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify helps us reach more listeners. Until next time, stay curious and stay safe. Thank you you.