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March 9, 2016

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Dentist goes on trial over teeth horror in France

Source: AP | March 9, 2016, Wednesday | Print Edition

A Dutchman dubbed the “horror dentist” by French media went on trial yesterday, facing charges of intentional violence and fraud.

Dentist Jacobus Van Nierop could be sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined 375,000 euros (US$413,000) if convicted. More than 50 victims are also seeking damages.

Scores of people came forward with complaints ranging from multiple healthy teeth removed, pieces of tools left in teeth, abscesses, recurrent infections and misshapen mouths between 2009 and 2013.

His trial in the central-eastern town of Nevers is expected to last until March 18.

One patient, Sylviane Boulesteix, has said she was unexpectedly summoned to his dental office in Chateau-Chinon, a small town located in a remote part of the Burgundy region in May 2012. Without warning, the dentist pulled eight of her teeth out and immediately fixed dentures on her raw gums. For three hours, the elderly woman says she sat gushing blood.

In the following days, she says Van Nierop refused to relieve her pain. A judicial expert later described a “cruel and perverse” man whose incompetence made Boulesteix lose several healthy teeth, go through a trauma and suffer irreversible damage to her mouth.

Van Nierop has said he remembers only one of the 75 patients who allegedly suffered “mutilations” or “permanent disabilities” at his hands between 2009 and 2013, according to court documents.

Van Nierop refused to answer questions during the investigation, saying only that the oral health of people in the region was “deplorable.”

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