French Surgeon Is On Trial For The Rape Or Abuse Of 299 Victims, Mostly Children

Joël Le Scouarnec, a former French surgeon, is accused of raping or s*xually abusing 299 persons, the majority of whom were children, in France’s largest child s*x abuse trial.

Hundreds of victims will face the 74-year-old defendant, who has not denied the charges but says he does not recall everything, during the trial, which began Monday in Vannes, Brittany, and is anticipated to last four months.

Le Scouarnec’s painstakingly detailed diaries, in which he chronicled decades of s*xual violence, are at the centre of the case. Because they were under anaesthesia when the assaults occurred, some victims were unaware of their mistreatment until investigators discovered the records.

A six-year-old girl accused Le Scouarnec of groping her over a fence in 2017, which sparked the start of the lawsuit. Hundreds of unsettling video files, his handwritten reports of abuse, and more than 300,000 photographs were found during a search of his house.

He was found guilty in 2020 of raping and s*xually abusing four children, including two of his nieces and a young patient, and was given a 15-year prison sentence.

158 men and 141 women, who were, on average, 11 years old at the time of the offenses, were the targets of the Vannes trial, which took place between 1989 and 2014.

Le Scouarnec allegedly engaged in s*xual violence at hospitals, disguising it as medical procedures, and preying on minors who were unlikely to remember the incident.

Amélie Lévêque, a survivor, described how, at the age of nine in 1991, she was admitted to the hospital with only dim recollections.

“I didn’t really remember the operation. I remembered the postoperation, a surgeon who was quite mean,” she said. Learning that her name was listed in Le Scouarnec’s notebooks was both a revelation and a trauma.

“That was the beginning of the answers to a lifetime of questions, and then it was the beginning of the descent into hell as I left the lawyer’s office,” she said. “I felt like I had lost control of everything. I wasn’t crazy, but now I had to face the truth of what had happened.”

Le Scouarnec remained a hospital surgeon in 2005 despite being found guilty of having child pornography. Health authorities were not immediately aware of his record due to bureaucratic delays, and they did not take any disciplinary action even after they did. The trial is seen by child protection organizations and activists as a watershed in revealing historical shortcomings in dealing with s*xual abuse in institutional and medical settings.

The Independent Commission on Incest and S*xual Violence Against Children has urged immediate change, saying that “Child abuse careers are built, not by monsters, but by all witnesses successive silences.”

According to the Sud-Ouest newspaper, Thibaut Kurzawa, Le Scouarnec’s attorney, stated that his client would “answer the judges’ questions” because he has decided “to face up to reality.”

In the meanwhile, advocacy organizations and victims hope the trial will lead to long-lasting changes in the way society safeguards children from abuse.