A French surgeon is on trial accused of raping or abusing 299 people, mostly children : NPR

VANNES, France — A former surgeon is about to face trial in France on Monday for the alleged rape or sexual abuse of 299 victims, most of them kids who have been his sufferers, in what investigators and his personal notebooks describe as a sample of violence spanning over three a long time.

Joël Le Scouarnec, now 74, will face a whole bunch of victims throughout a four-month trial in Vannes, Brittany. He faces as much as 20 years in jail if convicted, on prime of 15 years he has been serving after being discovered responsible in 2020 of rape and sexual assault of youngsters.

He doesn’t deny the allegations, although says he does not bear in mind every part. Some survivors haven’t any reminiscence of the assaults, having been unconscious on the time.

Le Scouarnec’s trial comes as activists are pushing to raise taboos which have lengthy surrounded sexual abuse in France. Essentially the most outstanding case was that of Gisèle Pélicot, who was drugged and raped by her now ex-husband and dozens of different males who have been convicted and sentenced in December to jail phrases starting from three to twenty years.

Youngster safety and girls’s rights teams and medical neighborhood associations have known as for a rally on Monday in entrance of the courthouse the place Le Scouarnec will likely be tried.

The case started in 2017, when a 6-year-old neighbor stated Le Scouarnec had touched her over the fence separating their properties.

A subsequent search of his residence uncovered greater than 300,000 images, 650 pedophilic, zoophilic and scatological video recordsdata, in addition to notebooks the place he described himself as a pedophile and detailed his actions, in accordance with investigation paperwork.

In 2020, Le Scouarnec was convicted of rape and sexual assault of 4 kids, together with two nieces, and was sentenced to fifteen years in jail.

He had admitted to little one abuse relationship to 1985-1986, however some circumstances couldn’t be prosecuted as a result of the statute of limitations had expired.

The Vannes trial will look at alleged rapes and different abuses dedicated between 1989 and 2014 towards 158 males and 141 ladies who have been aged 11 on common on the time.

The physician sexually abused each girls and boys after they have been alone of their hospital rooms, in accordance with investigation paperwork.

“I did not actually bear in mind the operation. I remembered the post-operation, a surgeon who was fairly imply,” one of many victims, Amélie Lévêque, recalled of her time within the hospital when she was 9 years previous in 1991. “I cried loads.”

Years later, she described feeling overwhelmed when she realized that her identify appeared in Le Scouarnec’s notebooks.

“That was the start of the solutions to a lifetime of questions, after which it was the start of the descent into hell,” she advised public broadcaster France 3. “I felt like I had misplaced management of every part. I wasn’t loopy, however now I needed to face the reality of what had occurred.”

“I fell right into a deep melancholy. … My household tried to assist, however I felt utterly alone.”

The Related Press doesn’t identify individuals who say they have been sexually assaulted until they consent to being recognized or resolve to inform their tales publicly.

Le Scouarnec’s lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, advised Sud-Ouest newspaper his shopper will “reply the judges’ questions” as he determined “to resist actuality.”

Le Scouarnec had already been convicted in 2005 for possessing and importing little one sexual abuse materials and sentenced to 4 months of suspended jail time. Regardless of that conviction, he was appointed as a hospital practitioner the next 12 months.

Some little one safety teams joined the proceedings as civil events, saying they hope to toughen the authorized framework to forestall such abuse.