Youngest victim only one year old: Surgeon in France admits mass child abuse

Once again, an abuse trial has shocked the whole of France: a surgeon raped his patients for decades. The prosecution speaks of almost 300 victims - the youngest was just one year old, the oldest 70 years old. At the start of the trial, the accused admitted to many of the crimes.

A French doctor accused of abusing almost 300 children has largely confessed at the start of the trial. "The accused acknowledges his responsibility for the vast majority of the crimes," said his lawyer Maxime Tessier before the criminal court in Vannes, Brittany. The former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec had kept detailed records of his crimes against his young patients.

The 74-year-old is suspected of having abused many of his young patients under the pretext of medical examinations and under anesthesia. The trial concerns 299 alleged victims, who were on average eleven years old. "I'm afraid to see him, even though I've been waiting for this day so much," said co-plaintiff Amélie Lévêque, now 42. According to the prosecution, she was abused by Le Scouarnec at the age of nine when she was being treated in hospital for appendicitis.

The doctor's victims were hoping first and foremost for "recognition by the justice system," said lawyer Marie Grimaud upon arriving at the court. Many of them had only learned what had happened to them when they were adults.

majority of victims under 15 years of age

"Even if you have forgotten it, the trauma remains. I still live with the consequences today," said one of the co-plaintiffs, who did not want to give his name, before the trial began. In 2018, investigators had given him excerpts from Le Scouarnec's diary to read, which concerned his abuse at the age of twelve. "Forgetting does not lessen the severity of the crimes," he said.

Le Scouarnec's alleged crimes came to light when investigators came across the doctor's diaries during a house search in another case. In them, he described in detail how he abused boys and girls - sometimes in the hospital room, sometimes even on the operating table. Investigators also found around 300,000 photos and videos with child pornography. At first, investigators assumed there were more than 300 victims, but some cases were deemed to be time-barred.

Le Scouarnec now faces charges of 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults over a period of two and a half decades. He faces up to 20 years in prison. 256 of the 299 alleged victims were younger than 15. According to the prosecution, the victims also include a one-year-old child, and the oldest victim was 70 years old.

Career despite being convicted of child pornography

The trial is likely to attract as much attention as the trial of serial rapist Dominique Pelicot, who was convicted in December. There are several parallels: According to the prosecution, many of Le Scouarnec's victims were unconscious during the crimes. In addition, like Pelicot, the surgeon kept careful records of his crimes and hoarded photos and videos. However, while in the Pelicot trial there was one victim and 51 perpetrators, this time there is one perpetrator and almost 300 victims.

Le Scouarnec worked in about a dozen different hospitals in western France. Although some of his bosses and colleagues knew that he had previously been convicted of child pornography, this did not hinder his career. This led to a second investigation into the failure of the authorities. At the start of the trial, a banner was hung near the court accusing the French Medical Association of being an "accomplice".

The trial is scheduled to last four months, and around 40 of the co-plaintiffs have requested that the public be temporarily excluded. The defendant was already sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2020 for abusing four girls in the 1990s, including two nieces and his neighbor's six-year-old daughter. It was the case of the neighbor's child that triggered the house search and thus brought to light the shocking extent of the alleged mass abuse.