Pedophile French surgeon on trial for abusing almost 300 patients

View of the front entrance's sign Courthouse of Saintes, on the eve of the opening of retired French surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec's trial, in Saintes, western France, Thursday, March 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

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A former French surgeon went on trial Monday charged with raping or sexually assaulting almost 300 patients, most of them children at the time, in one of the country’s largest child sex abuse cases.

Judge Aude Buresi declared the hearing in the western city of Vannes open as Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, took his place in the dock.

The former surgeon is already in jail after being found guilty in 2020 of abusing four children, including two of his nieces.

In the latest trial, Le Scouarnec faces allegations that he assaulted or raped 299 patients, many while waking up from anaesthetic or during post-op checkups, at a dozen hospitals between 1989 and 2014.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” said one of the victims, Amelie Leveque, 42. She added however that she was “afraid” to see the former doctor.

Two hundred and fifty-six of the victims were under 15, with the youngest aged one and the oldest 70.

Le Scouarnec’s lawyer Maxime Tessier told the court his client admitted to the “vast majority” of the charges.

The proceedings come just two months after Dominique Pelicot was convicted of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife Gisele Pelicot, who has since divorced him and become a feminist hero for refusing to be ashamed.

Like Pelicot, Le Scouarnec documented his crimes, noting his victims' names, ages and addresses and the nature of the abuse.

‘Major pervert’

In his notes, the doctor described himself as a “major pervert” and a “paedophile”.

“And I am very happy about it,” he recorded.

The trial will be held in public, but seven days of testimony from victims who were targeted while minors will be held behind closed doors.

The victims “expect nothing from Mr. Le Scouarnec”, lawyer Marie Grimaud told reporters.

But, she added, “they are hoping to regain a little dignity, humanity and above all consideration from the justice system, because until now, the judicial violence has been extremely significant.”

She expressed regret that the victims would be relegated to a separate room during the trial.

If convicted, Le Scouarnec faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. French law does not allow sentences to be added together even when there are multiple victims.

“This is undoubtedly the biggest case of child sex crime in France, or at least the case involving the most victims sexually assaulted or raped by a single man,” French daily Le Figaro cited a person familiar with the matter as saying.

‘Code of silence’

Protesters staged a rally outside the court in Vannes, carrying letters that formed the phrase “Stop the code of silence”.

Ariel Ladebourg, a 21-year-old medical student, said the trial was just “the tip of the iceberg,” suggesting that many such assaults against children go unpunished.

Victims and child rights advocates say Le Scouarnec’s case highlights systemic shortcomings that allowed him to repeatedly commit sexual crimes.

The surgeon practised for decades until his retirement despite a 2005 sentence for owning sexually abusive images of children, and colleagues raising their concerns.

Le Scouarnec was practising in the western town of Lorient in Brittany in 2004 when the US FBI alerted French authorities that he was among hundreds in France who had been consulting sex abuse images of children online.

A court in Vannes handed him a suspended four-month jail sentence the following year.

But by that time the doctor had already moved on to work in another Brittany town, Quimperle, where he was promoted despite the management being made aware of his conviction.

He then moved to southwestern France, where he worked until his retirement in 2017.

Investigators uncovered his alleged crimes after he retired in 2017, when a six-year-old girl accused him of rape and police found accounts of abuse in his diaries.

More than 460 journalists from over 110 media outlets including 40 foreign agencies have been accredited to cover the trial. The verdict is expected in early June.