Written by Fanny Borius et Eleonore Duplay
Sarah Martineau is one of Joël Le Scouarnec’s rare victims to agree to testify with an overdraft. “So that children are better protected,” she insists. This August 10, 2003, she was left alone in her hospital room. It was the day of 10 years.
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A simple appendicitis and it is a life that rocks for Sarah. On August 10, 2003, she was admitted to the Sables-d’Olonne hospital after vomiting part of the day. The pediatric service of the establishment is then overloaded.
In the absence of space, Sarah is welcomed upstairs for adults. There, she does not receive listening from caregivers for a 10-year-old girl who wants to call her mother.
The surgeon, then on a replacement contract, will take advantage of the situation. Joël Le Scouarnec enters without her room, asks him if she has gas, begins to touch her belly then descends and caresses her sex. He introduces his finger into his vagina and performs back and forth gestures.
Tétanized, Sarah says nothing, does not move. She will remain hospitalized for three days and does not remember the other rape, “My brain must have wanted to protect yourself”, she said to explain her amnesia. He is the only victim identified to date in Vendée.
For Sarah, there is a before and an after. Little girl “Always in a good mood”, “smiling” Described by her mother, Sarah becomes fearful, made a lot of nightmares and night terrors, is overweight and knows repeated genital inflammations.
Auscultated, a doctor tells the father that his 12 -year -old daughter has already had sex. His father disputes. Sarah tried to talk to her parents about it, especially a family meal, but she is not listened to. She crosses her adolescence as she can.
-In 2018, at 25, she saw her first pregnancy. It is also the year when gendarmes come to ring at home. She understands right away.
Reading the surgeon’s notebooks, it is a shock, which, according to a doctor, could have compromised the life of his baby who then developed in utero.
It takes the steps to build civil party. During her pregnancy follow -up, she refused vaginal touch and asks to give birth by cesarean. She will have a second child 4 years later, also born by Cesarean.
Since rape, Sarah has been undergoing stomach aches. A word is given on this evil: endometriosis. According to a study, it can be caused by trauma or sexual violence.
At the helm, while Sarah Martineau posted before the judge and against Joël Le Scouarnec, she launches: “I speak to you as a little girl that you have destroyed. I said nothing, I did not shout, I was ashamed. You stole my child life that I was yesterday and of adults that I am Today”.
Sarah must be operated next week with a hysterectomy, the complete removal of the uterus. A solution hopes to no longer undergo pain.
On August 10, 2024, she married. A date that she did not choose at random. “He has spoiled all my birthdays. I only wanted this date linked to this massacre.”
It is in the song, on stage, that Sarah rebuilds himself: “It is the only place where I can cry and free myself from my anxieties,” she explains.
It is by following caregiver studies that Sarah understands that the gesture she suffered is not normal. Today, she wants to leave this environment and wants to start a conversion as a pastry chef. She wants her testimony to allow children to be better protected from adults.
She also hopes for a speech by the Minister of Justice. She also wishes to question the order of doctors who did not take the necessary measures at the time, she deplores.
In response to his deposition, Joël Le Scouarnec “Recognize
