Upset stomach to overdose: A child's ordeal at France abuse trial

French retiree Roland Vinet is certain his grandson Mathis would still be alive if he had never met doctor Joel Le Scouarnec as a 10-year-old with an upset stomach.

Mathis is one of the 299 patients Le Scouarnec, a 74-year-old former surgeon and convicted pedophile, is accused of having sexually abused throughout his career.

Mathis died of a drugs overdose aged 24, but his grandparents Roland and Mauricette attended the opening of the surgeon's trial on Monday on his behalf.

Roland said both he and his wife are still wracked with guilt that they did not immediately see the signs.

"We both have therapists," he said.

"Not a day goes by that I don't tell myself: 'You missed something. You didn't ask him the right questions at the right time.'"

Sitting in their home in western France before the trial, Roland held up two pictures: one of his grandson grinning aged 10 and another of the troubled young man he became.

On June 14, 2007, Roland Vinet accompanied 10-year-old Mathis and his father to hospital in the western town of Quimperle because he had been vomiting.

Le Scouarnec "seemed calm and agreeable," the 78-year-old grandfather said.

"He said it wasn't worth us sticking around. And if there was a problem, he would call. He put us at ease," he added.

Mathis spent the night at the hospital under observation, while his father and grandfather went home.

- 'Deeply scarred' -

After Mathis was discharged, he said nothing about his stay in hospital, but his behavior slowly started to change, his grandmother Mauricette said.

"He would have showers all the time," she said.

"He became aggressive. I thought he had probably had a run-in with someone while playing outside, but he wouldn't talk to us. We thought it was probably just him being a teenager," she said.

Mathis eventually turned to drink and drugs.

Then in 2018, more than a decade after his hospital visit, police informed him that he was among Le Scouarnec's alleged victims.

They read to him the doctor's diary entry about him.

Mathis decided to sue the retired surgeon and went to speak to a lawyer, remaining more than an hour and a half inside her office, according to his grandfather.

"By the time he came out, he had completely broken down," he said.

But he did not tell his grandparents what had happened.

Francesca Satta, the lawyer, said she spoke to a "young man in his twenties, who was deeply scarred and having trouble accepting what had happened to him".

"He had remembered certain of the doctor's gestures which, as a child, he had interpreted as being medical," she said.

- 'Hatred' -

His grandparents say Mathis' mental health deteriorated rapidly over the years, until his death by overdose in 2021.

A French court had the previous year found Le Scouarnec guilty of abusing four children, including two of his nieces.

Roland and Mauricette only found out what exactly had happened to their grandson when they became civil parties in the latest case against him.

They also discovered that the surgeon continued to practice for decades, even after he was handed a suspended four-month sentence in 2005 for owning sexually abusive images of children, and colleagues raising their concerns.

"He should never have worked after that," said Mauricette, accusing the authorities of not doing enough to stop him.

"Nobody reacted," she said ahead of the trial.

She said she would be in court to seek justice for her grandson, and to see the man who had abused him.

"I want to see him and cry out the hatred I have for him for what he did to Mathis," Mauricette said.

© Agence France-Presse