3 hours ago
3
A 74-year-old surgeon accused of abusing 299 people, most of them children, while they were anaesthetised or recovering from operations has told a French court he did “hideous things” and is prepared to take responsibility for them.
Joël Le Scouarnec is accused of raping or sexually abusing the victims, whose average age was 11, during a 30-year career, and detailing the abuse in notebooks.
“I’ve done hideous things,” the 74-year-old told a court in Vannes on Monday, the opening day of his trial. He said he was “perfectly aware that these wounds cannot be erased or healed” and he was ready to “take responsibility” for his actions.
Almost all the children were unaware of the alleged abuse until police knocked at their doors having discovered their names in the handwritten “black books” found at Le Scouarnec’s home.
The abuse is alleged to have taken place between 1989 and 2014, when Le Scouarnec worked at more than a dozen private and public hospitals in Brittany and other parts of western France.
In 2017, neighbours in Jonzac, north of Bordeaux, reported Le Scouarnec to police. In 2020, he was convicted for the rape or sexual assault of four children, including a young hospital patient. He was sentenced to 15 years and is currently in prison.
When detectives searched his home they found hard disks containing more than 300,000 photos and videos featuring child sexual abuse, as well as notebooks recording details of the alleged abuse of patients. Officers also discovered a collection of dolls, some lifesize, under the floorboards.
In one note, Le Scouarnec is alleged to have written: “I am a paedophile and I always will be.”
The trial, which is expected to last four months, will also focus on how Le Scouarnec was allowed to continue operating on children despite having been convicted and given a four-month suspended sentence for possessing child sexual abuse images in 2005.
His employers and the professional body for doctors, L’Ordre des Médecins, were informed, as was the French ministry of health. No action was taken.
More than 60 lawyers are representing the victims and their families, who will give evidence next month in the chronological order in which the abuse is alleged to have taken place. Two hundred and fifty-six of the victims were under 15, with the youngest aged one and the oldest 70.
One of Le Scouarnec’s lawyers, Maxime Tessier, told the court his client admitted to the “vast majority” of the charges. Le Scouarnec’s former wife and his three children are expected to give evidence on Tuesday. Other members of the surgeon’s family will be questioned the following day.
Marie, one of those seeking justice at the court in Vannes, said: “I want all our trauma to be recognised. They can tell us that it’s in our head, but it’s been there for years and even before we knew what he did to us.”
Before the trial opened, Frédéric Benoist, a lawyer for the child protection association la Voix de L’Enfant (Child’s Voice), a civil party in the case, said it was “scandalous” that L’Ordre des Médecins was included in the case along with the victims.
Negar Haeri, a lawyer representing the order, said they were “defending the collective interests of the profession that had been sullied by the alleged activities of Joël Le Scouarnec”.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
