A 74-year-old former French surgeon, Joël Le Scouarnec, is set to stand trial in Vannes, Brittany, starting Monday, accused of sexually abusing 299 victims, mainly children under his care, over nearly three decades. The trial, expected to last four months, will examine allegations of rapes and other abuse against 158 men and 141 women, with the victims’ average age being 11.
Le Scouarnec, who does not deny the allegations but claims he does not remember everything, faces hundreds of alleged victims during the trial. Many victims, having been unconscious at the time of the alleged assaults, also have no memory of the events.
The case came to light in 2017 when a 6-year-old neighbor accused Le Scouarnec of inappropriately touching her over the fence that separated their properties. Investigators found over 300,000 photos and 650 pedophilic, zoophilic, and scatological video files in his home, along with notebooks where Le Scouarnec described himself as a pedophile and detailed his actions. Investigators used these notebooks to identify and track down alleged victims.
Le Scouarnec was previously convicted in 2020 for raping and sexually assaulting his two nieces when they were children and a 4-year-old patient, receiving a 15-year prison sentence. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted in this trial, on top of his current sentence.
Amélie Lévêque, one of the alleged victims and a patient of Le Scouarnec in 1991, recalled little about her surgery but remembered “a surgeon who was quite mean” following the procedure. She described feeling a loss of control and falling into a deep depression upon learning the truth.
The trial is expected to shed further light on the extent of Le Scouarnec’s actions over his career, which spanned from 1989 to 2014. Despite his previous conviction in 2005 for possessing and importing child sexual abuse material, he was still appointed as a hospital practitioner the following year.
Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/surgeon-trial-allegedly-raping-abusing-299-victims-mostly-child-patients
