But by that time the doctor had already moved on to work in Quimperle, another town in the same region of Brittany.

The Quimperle hospital was struggling to recruit new staff and its maternity ward and surgery department were threatened with closure, the town’s current mayor Michael Quernez said.

“The arrival of the new surgeon must have been a relief,” he said.

Le Scouarnec did not tell managers about his conviction but a fellow practitioner, psychiatrist Thierry Bonvalot, heard about it from another colleague.

Bonvalot told AFP the colleague “made it sound like it wasn’t anything”.

“He said he was an alcoholic who was lonely, whose wife no longer wanted him, and didn’t provide any proof of the conviction,” Bonvalot said.

“But then very quickly other things started to draw my attention.”

First, Le Scouarnec defended a radiologist at the hospital who had been accused of raping female patients, Bonvalot said.

The man, Mohamed Frehat, would later be sentenced to 18 years in jail for raping and assaulting 32 female patients, including eight minors.

On another occasion, Bonvalot, who also served as head of the hospital board, needed to ask Le Scouarnec about an operation he had performed on a young boy.

“He summed up the operation with so many sexual metaphors that I was shocked. He confessed he had been sentenced for child pornography,” the psychiatrist said.

“I realised he was dangerous and asked him to resign. He refused.”

Doctors vote

On June 14, 2006, in a letter seen by AFP, Bonvalot wrote to the hospital director questioning his colleague’s ability “to remain completely calm when treating young children” in view of his “legal past”.

On July 19, he sent a copy of the letter to the Order of Physicians of the Finistere department of Brittany. AFP saw the stamp indicating the body had received and read it.