‘We hope trial against surgeon will hold French authorities accountable to act, prevent paedophilia’

‘We hope trial against surgeon will hold French authorities accountable to act, prevent paedophilia’

Frederick Benois is a French lawyer for the NGO Lavoa Deon, the voice of children. He joins me now live. Frederick, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to us. You pleaded on behalf of the NGO during the Scorneck trial where your focus was really on the immunity he seemed to benefit for for over 20 years. Tell me a bit more about that first. It’s not 20 years, it’s more likely 30 years. And the question is uh what explains such a long criminal career uh the silence in the family because uh his wife knew his sister knew as early as 2000 and of course and this is something that uh is is very important for the LA nobody acted but besides the family many people many medical uh people in the uh in the hospitals knew about this 2005 uh cond sorry uh for uh being uh having paid to to visit uh pornography child pornography websites. And what is uh totally amazing is that no one decided to take any preventive measure to make sure that this man would not be ever professionally in contact with children. So there is some kind of a chain of uh malfunctions uh which explains this impunity. Indeed. And just a a question on these prevention policies. So at the moment there are no resources or prevention policies in France. Is that correct? when it comes to child uh uh pedophilia very very uh poor protection of children here in France as far as prevention of pedophil upset in the lon by the French political system uh which doesn’t act and maybe maybe this case uh will uh force the governments any government uh to to start uh and act uh more seriously uh in prevention of pedophilia. Uh the the the system here is very poorly financed compared to what happens in Great Britain or Germany. is is something like 10 times uh less uh as if we were to consider that victims here in France are 10 times less important than in Great Britain or in Germany. And what about increasing public awareness? We saw so much support here in France uh for Gizel Pelico. Everyone knows her name, the woman who was abused by her ex-husband and and and dozens of unknown men while she was unconscious. Her ex-husband Dominic Pelico, we know his name, we know her name. Yet for this case, there’s been very little public support, very little demonstrations for these 300 victims. Why? There were public support. There were demonstrations at the beginning of the case. Now, uh very early in the trial, Luan admitted his responsibility. So in fact there was some kind of a repetition of the of the same facts that were examined over several weeks, several months and therefore I guess that’s why they did not warrant a permanent coverage. Uh people who were uh in the trial uh saw every day two or three victims explaining their situation, explaining uh how it was difficult for them uh to to to live with problems that didn’t they did not understand uh because they did not really know what caused these problems. And then in 201 17 or 18 or 19 they were informed by the French Jean Marie uh of what happened to them and they connected they realized why they had the those problems. So there was some kind of a repetition that the facts uh that were examined for for the so many weeks and probably this is why uh there wasn’t a permanent coverage. But again, what I hope what we hope is that this trial will at last uh put the the the French authorities in front of their responsibilities and start to act to prevent uh pedophilia criminality. So Frederri, what concretely needs to be done to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again? For example, uh Luanik’s sister in 2000 understood that that he abused sexually of her own daughters. She went on internet and she found nothing. She wanted to know more about pedophilia and she found nothing. Imagine that uh she while looking into internet that she understood that some structures were uh working upstream to to help uh those who are sexually attracted to children to deal with this psychiatric disorder. then probably she would have contacted them. Probably they would have helped her and probably they would have interfered with Luanx’s uh criminal career. At that time we were 2,000. So that’s 17 years before Luan Luwanik’s arrest. Can you imagine uh how many victims would have been avoided? Absolutely. Frederick, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. Frederick Benoa, a French lawyer for the NGO Lavoa Don, the voice of children. Thank you so much.

French surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec, who admitted to sexually abusing nearly 300 mostly child patients, told his trial on Monday he was not asking for “leniency” but wanted “to become a better person”. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective, FRANCE 24’s Genie Godula welcomes Frédéric Benoist, lawyer for “La voix de l’enfant”.
#Paedophilia #JoelLeScouarnec #ChildSexualAbuseTrial

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