A former surgeon, Joel Le Scouarnec is set to stand trial later this month for allegedly raping or sexually assaulting no fewer than 300 former patients—most of them children, many unconscious—over 25 years across western France.
The allegations against Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, means his four-month trial, due to start on February 24, will likely have an immense impact at home and abroad.
This comes two months after Frenchman Dominique Pelicot was convicted of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated then-wife Gisele Pelicot, a case that made her a feminist hero worldwide.
In Le Scouarnec’s case, he is the sole defendant accused of crimes against hundreds of victims.
The trial in Vannes, Brittany, will be open to the public, but seven days of testimony from victims who were targeted while minors will be kept behind closed doors.
Regional prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger stated that “Mr Le Scouarnec has generally acknowledged his involvement in many of the events in question” as well as his “concealment strategies”, said regional prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger.
The average age of the victims is 11 but the former surgeon is also accused of raping a one-year-old and sexually abusing a 70-year-old.
He allegedly perpetrated sexual violence between 1989 and 2014 when he worked at a dozen medical institutes in western France.
Le Scouarnec is being tried for 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults, made worse by the fact that he misused his position as a doctor, targeting mostly children.
In total, 256 out of the 299 victims were under the age of 15. 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.
The former doctor is already in prison after being sentenced in December 2020 to 15 years for raping and sexually assaultin four children, including two of his nieces.
Many victims were traumatized when they learned of the events, sometimes decades later.
Not all of them will take part in the trial but many say they expect the proceedings to provide explanations.
The authorities began investigating Le Scouarnec in 2017 after a six-year-old girl who lived in the same neighborhood in the southwestern town of Jonzac alleged he had raped her.
While Le Scouarnec is the sole defendant, the actions of officials will be scrutinized.
When investigators searched Le Scouarnec’s house in Jonzac, where he lived as a recluse, they found dozens of dolls that he used as sex toys along with 300,000 pornographic images.
In another parallel with the trial of Dominique Pelicot — who filmed the male visitors to the family home — Le Scouarnec carefully wrote down the names of his victims, some of whom he abused on the operating table.
While Le Scouarnec is the sole defendant, the actions of officials will come under scrutiny at the trial.
Le Scouarnec was struck off the medical register in 2017 after a complaint and his being remanded in custody.
He had been convicted at the end of 2005 for downloading child sexual abuse images.
However, the four-month suspended sentence he received was not accompanied by any obligation to receive treatment or a ban on practising.
Le Scouarnec then found work at a hospital in the Brittany town of Quimperle, where he was promoted despite the fact that the management was aware of his conviction.
He then relocated to southwestern France, where he worked until retiring in 2017.
Regional prosecutors have opened a separate investigation for “failure to prevent a crime or offence against the integrity of persons,” though no individual or institution has yet been targeted.
Children’s rights association La Voix de l’Enfant (The Child’s Voice), a civil party in the trial, filed a complaint in April 2023 against the judicial authorities and the ministry of health for “endangering the lives of others”.
Le Scouarnec’s lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, told AFP that “his state of mind has not changed”.
“He wants to defend himself and he wants to explain himself,” he said.
The former surgeon was married and had three sons born between 1980 and 1987. The couple separated in the early 2000s, but their divorce was not made official until 2023.
His wife, interviewed in 2019 in the regional Le Telegramme newspaper, said she “never” had any suspicions, even if she had caught him “looking strangely” at young neighbours.
