A former surgeon went on trial in western France on Monday on charges that he raped or sexually assaulted hundreds of people, most of them former pediatric patients, in what is widely considered the biggest pedophilia case in French history.
The former surgeon, Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is accused of raping or sexually assaulting 299 people over 25 years, from 1989 to 2014. Almost all the victims are his former patients, and almost all of them were children at the time of the alleged abuse. The average age of the patients he is accused of sexually assaulting was 11.
“I have committed heinous acts,” Mr. Le Scouarnec told the court as the trial opened in the coastal town of Vannes, in Brittany.
Wearing a black vest, with a bald head and a ring of white hair on the back and sides, he mumbled at first, then spoke more clearly, as he acknowledged responsibility for some of the alleged rapes and sexual assaults, although he said that other acts he was accused of did not fall under those categories.
Referring to his victims, he said that he was “perfectly aware that these wounds today are indelible, irreparable” and that he owed it to them to “take responsibility for my actions and the consequences they may have had.”
Mr. Le Scouarnec faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted, because there are no consecutive sentences in France. The rape charges are mostly related to penetration with fingers, which reflects the definition of rape in France.
Maxime Tessier, one of Mr. Le Scouarnec’s lawyers, told the court that his client acknowledged responsibility for “a vast majority” of the allegations of abuse and would not be “mute or glib.”
“This is a defendant who wishes to make himself totally available to the court and to all the parties,” Mr. Tessier said.
The proceedings are expected to last nearly four months. Monday was devoted mostly to procedural matters, but Mr. Le Scouarnec listened and stared intently at Aude Buresi, the presiding judge, as she summarized the case and then read out a dizzyingly long list of people he is accused of abusing.
Mr. Le Scouarnec’s listed victims were spread around the west of France, following his career as he moved from the Indre-et-Loire area to Brittany, and finally south to Charente-Maritime, working in several private clinics and public hospitals.
The case is unprecedented in scale for Vannes, a picturesque town of about 54,000 people with colorful half-timbered houses and centuries-old ramparts.
“Everything about this terrible case has proved exceptional,” Stéphane Kellenberger, the prosecutor in the case, told the court.
Modeling their organization after the colossal trials held in Paris after devastating terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and in 2016, the local court authorities have made space for hundreds of people attending the trial.
That includes those listed as victims and their families, more than 60 lawyers, the general public, and more than 450 accredited journalists from as far as Japan and Australia.
The local authorities have requisitioned a low-slung, former law school building that is a short walk from the courthouse to rebroadcast the proceedings in overflow rooms.
A psychologist and support dogs will be on hand, and as was the case in France’s biggest terrorism trials, listed victims will wear colored lanyards — green if they are willing to talk to the media, red if not.
Some victims have asked to testify behind closed doors, meaning some days will be closed to the press and public.
Opening just two months after the verdicts in the widely publicized case of Gisèle Pelicot — in which dozens of men, including her husband, were convicted of raping her — this trial is expected to provoke more soul-searching about the extent of sex crimes in France.
Many of the victims were still under anesthesia or drowsy from it when they were believed to have been raped or sexually assaulted. Many of the victims experienced trauma in the years that followed, but few remembered the abuse until the police contacted them.
Mr. Le Scouarnec has already been convicted twice. In 2005 he was found guilty of possessing child sexual abuse imagery, but he was allowed to continue to treat children until he was arrested in 2017.
Then, in 2020, he was found guilty of raping or sexually assaulting four children, including a girl who lived next door and two of his nieces.
After Mr. Le Scouarnec’s arrest in that case, investigators found hundreds of pages of his diaries as well as two spreadsheets on hard drives.
The diaries elaborately detailed the sexual abuse of individual children and the spreadsheets listed many of their names, ages, addresses and synopses of the abuse they suffered.
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