A multi-millionaire dentist in France has been jailed for deliberately mutilating patients from low-income neighbourhoods of Marseille, in a money-making scheme in which he performed thousands of unnecessary procedures.
Lionel Guedj, 41, was jailed for eight years and his father, Carnot Guedj, 70, who worked part-time for him, was jailed for five years after a court heard harrowing accounts of patients who had booked an appointment for minor issues, such as a cavity or loose crown, and ended up having scores of healthy teeth removed for no medical reason.
Lionel Guedj was sentenced to eight years in prison, and his father five years.
Both had been booed by a crowd as they arrived at the Marseille courthouse.
In a rare move, the judge ordered both men directly to prison, regardless of whether or not they decide to appeal, to applause from dozens of victims attending the hearing.
Many former patients were furious that the pair had remained at liberty since being charged. Several testified to suffering intense pain as well as social isolation because of the mutilations.
“I had lost half my teeth by the time I was 45, and at 55 I no longer had any, only implants,” Ouassila, who declined to give her full name, said ahead of the ruling.
One woman described going to him, aged 18, for a minor tooth enamel issue. He pulled out 24 of her healthy teeth without properly disinfecting the roots. She said that since then: “I have pain 24 hours a day … My life is on standby.” She said she shied away from society and felt shame. “You want to crawl into a hole and never come out again, even to work.”
Guedj often said he would give people a Hollywood smile. But one 50-year-old coach driver said the dentist had filed down so much that he was left with “mice’s teeth”.
One woman said the constant foul odour from her mouth after repeated infections meant she gave up her job serving in a bakery and avoided opening her mouth around other people. Another man who suffered a series of tooth extractions said he couldn’t afford to have his teeth redone and his life had been seriously affected. “I can’t eat properly … I don’t laugh like I did before.”
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