A former surgeon was tried Monday in the west of France to violate or sexually assaulted hundreds of people, most of the former pediatric patients, in what is largely considered to be the greatest case of pedophilia in French history.
The former surgeon, Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is accused of having raped or sexually assaulted 299 people over 25 years, between 1989 and 2014. Almost all the victims are his former patients, and almost all were children at the era of alleged abuse. The average age of patients he is accused of sexual assault was 11.
The trial opened its doors in the coastal city of Vannes, in Brittany, where Mr. Le Scouarnec was led by police at the start of the trial.
Wearing a black vest, with a bald head and a white hair ring on the sides, he spoke clearly while the court confirmed his name, his date of birth and other biographical information.
“Your profession before being imprisoned?” Aude Buresi, judge president, asked.
“Surgeon,” said the Scouarnec calmly.
The procedure should last almost four months.
The victims listed by the Scouarnec were distributed in the west of France, after his career while he was moving from the region of Indre-et-Loire in Brittany, and finally from the south to Charente-Maritime, working in several private clinics and public hospitals.
The case is unprecedented on a scale for Vannes, a picturesque city of approximately 54,000 people with colored half-past houses and segmental ramparts.
Modeling of their organization after the colossal trials held in Paris after having devastated terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and 2016, local judicial authorities had to make room for hundreds of people who should attend the trial.
This includes people listed as victims and their families, more than 60 lawyers, the general public and more than 450 journalists accredited from Japan and Australia.
Local authorities requisitioned an old building from the Faculty of Law Surbout and a few steps from the courthouse to rebroadcast the procedure in the overflow rooms.
A psychologist and support dogs will be at hand, and as was the case in the greatest trials of terrorism in France, the victims listed will carry colorful lanes – green if they are ready to speak to the press, Red Otherwise.
Victims can ask to testify behind closed doors at any time of the trial, which means that certain days can be closed to the press and the public.
Mr. Le Scouarnec risks a maximum of 20 years in prison if he is sentenced, because there are no consecutive penalties in France.
He denied rape accusations, but admitted to having touched the genitals of certain patients during medical examinations. The charges of rape are mainly linked to penetration with the fingers, which reflects the definition of rape in France.
Opening of only two months after the verdicts in the largely publicized case of Gisèle Pelicot – in which dozens of men, including her husband, were recognized for having raped her – this trial should provoke more soul on the extent Sexual crimes in France.
Many victims were still under anesthesia or sleeping when they were sexually raped or assaulted. Many victims have undergone trauma in the years that followed, but few remember abuse until the police contacted them.
The Scouarnec has already been sentenced twice. In 2005, he was found guilty of possession of children’s abuse images, but he was authorized to continue to treat children until his arrest in 2017.
Then, in 2020, he was found guilty of having raped or sexually assaulted four children, including a girl who lived next to it and two of her nieces.
After the arrest of Mr. Le Scouarnec in this case, the investigators found hundreds of pages of his intimate newspapers as well as two calculation sheets on the hard drives.
The newspapers in depth detailed the sexual abuses of individual children and the calculation sheets listed of many of their names, ages, addresses and synops of the abuses they have suffered.
