A former surgeon goes on trial later this month charged with raping or sexually assaulting almost 300 former patients, most of them children and many of them unconscious at the time, over a quarter of a century across western France, Report informs via NDTV World.
The sheer scale and horror of the allegations against Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, means his four-month trial, due to start on February 24, is likely to have an immense impact at home and abroad.
And it will have added resonance coming 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 this case, Le Scouarnec is the sole defendant accused of crimes against hundreds of victims.
The trial in the city of Vannes in Brittany will be held in public but seven days of testimony from victims who were targeted while minors will be behind closed doors.
“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 assaulting a 70-year-old.
He allegedly committed sexual violence between 1989 and 2014 when he worked at a dozen medical institutions in western France.
Le Scouarnec is being tried for 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults, aggravated by the fact that he abused his position as a doctor and mostly targeted children.
In total, 256 victims out of the 299 were younger than 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 assaulting four children, including two of his nieces.
