for sure! But he always thought of others, always asked if he could help," says the French retiree, in her 80s. "He loved to be out in the garden with his grandfather, picking green beans. He was a charming boy, Mathis," she adds. "But, as you know, there was a 'before' - and there was an 'after'." Mauricette and her husband Roland are among the 267 plaintiffs who have pressed charges against Joël Le Scouarnec, the French former surgeon who is accused of abusing almost 300 people - mostly children, and almost all his patients - over the course of several decades. The trial started in Vannes, Brittany, last Monday.

Le Scouarnec and Mathis only crossed paths once, when Mathis, aged 10, was hospitalised overnight at the clinic in the small French north-western town of Quimperlé. Le Scouarnec - a mild-mannered, respected gastroenterologist - told Mathis' parents the boy had to be kept overnight for checks. It turned out Mathis only had a stomach ache, and he was sent home the next day. But Mauricette is convinced the brief hospital stay changed Mathis forever. "The unease set in, little by little. It happened gradually in the first year; then he stopped being happy and became aggressive with everyone," she tells the BBC.

There is no way to establish conclusively whether Mathis' troubles were linked to the surgeon. What is certain is that in his teenage years Mathis distanced himself from his family and started using increasingly hard drugs; later, he spent time in detox and rehab centres. Then, in 2018, police knocked on his door. They told him a man named Joël Le Scouarnec had been arrested the year before for raping his six-year-old neighbour. During a search of the surgeon's home, police uncovered stacks of diaries and hard disks in which Le Scouarnec appeared to list hundreds more victims. Mathis' name was among them. Mauricette said Mathis told her police then read out an excerpt of the diary to him, which seemed to detail abuse Le Scouarnec's inflicted on him during his hospital stay.