- WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A French surgeon accused of sexually abusing nearly 300 young children over the course of 25 years is set to go on trial this month in the country’s biggest ever paedophile case.
Joel Le Scouarnec, 73, is accused of assaulting or raping 299 children, mainly his hospital patients, between 1989 and 2014. He faces more than 100 rape charges and 150 charges of sexual assault.
The trial in Vannes, north-west France, comes after a years-long police investigation in which cops discovered child-sized sex dolls, more than 300,000 child abuse images and several depraved diary entries in which Le Scouarnec detailed the assaults he carried out on his young patients.
Le Scouarnec has admitted to some but not all charges in the upcoming trial commencing on February 24, but has said that several anecdotes he had written down were only ‘fantasies’.
In many instances, however, he allegedly penned ‘I am a pedophile’ in his journals.
The indictment brought forward by the public prosecutor of Lorient, in Brittany, says the doctor felt ‘omnipotent’ and was ‘flirting with danger’ in a ‘calculated manner’ as he allegedly carried out 300 acts against 299 people, French news outlet Le Monde reported.
In 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for the rape and sexual assault of four minors, including his two nieces who are now in their 30s, as well as a child who was a patient at the establishment where he worked.
He was first arrested in 2017 after his six-year-old neighbour told her mother that the surgeon had exposed himself and molested her.
He was eventually arrested after the victim’s parents reported Le Scouarnec to the police, at which point he was reportedly living like a recluse surrounded by child-sized dolls.
Following his arrest, officers found the detailed diaries chronologically listing and naming his victims over the course of several years.
Next to each child’s name was a description on the nature of the heinous sexual acts inflicted on them.
Investigators also said that under the guise of medical acts, the doctor sexually took advantage of the children as soon as they were alone in a hospital room.
He usually targeted patients so young they did not remember or understand what was happening.
The court was also shown disturbing videos of the surgeon with his dolls.
Questions arose during Le Scouarnec’s 2020 trial about whether some people may have been aware of the alleged abuses.
The upcoming trial is likely to raise further uncomfortable questions over whether the surgeon was protected by his colleagues at the facility where he worked.
The surgeon had already been sentenced in 2005 to a four-month suspended prison sentence for possession of child pornographic images after the FBI warned French authorities.
His family members are also said to have known of Le Scouarnec’s pedophilia but failed to stop him.
Some of his former patients, who are all now of age, have said they remember the surgeon touching them during their medical examinations.
But because many of his alleged victims were under the effect of anaesthetics when their assaults took place, they had no memory of the events and were surprised to be contacted by police.
Some alleged victims have said, however, that the horrific revelations have helped them make sense of the unexplained trauma that they have had to cope with for most of their lives.
According to Francesca Satta, a lawyer representing several alleged victims, among her clients are the ‘families of two men who did remember, and who ended up taking their own lives’, the BBC reported.
One of the alleged victims who was assaulted in 1996 while a patient of Le Scouarnec, only referred to in the media as Marie, told radio station France Bleu she is ‘apprehensive’ about the trial.
‘On the one hand, it has to be settled so that we can move on once and for all. But when we talk about Le Scouarnec, there are images that come back to me over and over again,’ she said.
‘Not having any knowledge of sexuality at that age, it went unnoticed,’ she said. ‘But my body remembered it very well. I have trauma from that rape. My body is blocked, it no longer trusts.’
The upcoming trial is expected to last until June.
