A retired French surgeon is facing trial for allegedly sexually assaulting or raping nearly 300 individuals, predominantly children.
ADVERTISEMENT Joël Le Scouarnec, a former French surgeon, went on trial in France on Monday to face charges of sexually molesting or raping hundreds of victims.
The case outlines how Le Scouarnec is alleged to have sexually attacked 299 of his patients, most of them children, with investigators and his own notebooks suggesting a pattern of violence stretching over three decades.
“I committed odious acts,” admitted Le Scouarnec to a court in Vannes, “they were only children.”
The 74-year-old could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, along with the 15 years he has already been serving for a previous conviction of rape and sexual abuse of children in 2020.
The former surgeon acknowledged committing rapes and sexual assaults, but claims he does not remember every detail of the incidents.
“I am aware that these injuries are irreparable,” he stated. “I cannot go back in time but I owe it to all of these people and their loved ones to take responsibility for my actions.”
Some survivors do not remember the assaults as they were unconscious at the time. One man, now in his thirties, testified that he was assaulted during a consultation in 1995 when he was still a young boy.
Le Scouarnec’s trial comes as activists are advocating for the removal of long-standing taboos surrounding sexual abuse in France. The case follows the momentum generated by the highly publicized rape case of Gisèle Pélicot.
Pélicot was drugged and raped by her ex-husband and numerous other men, who were convicted with sentences ranging from three to 20 years in prison.
The four-month trial in Vannes, western France, will examine alleged rapes and other abuses committed over a 25-year period, between 1989 and 2014, against 158 men and 141 women, with an average age of 11 at the time of abuse.
Le Scouarnec had been previously convicted in 2005 for possession and importation of child sexual abuse materials, and sentenced to four months of suspended prison time. Despite this, he was appointed as a hospital practitioner the following year.
Some child protection groups have joined the proceedings as civil parties, hoping to tighten the legal framework to prevent such abuse from occurring.
