Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is set to stand trial in France on March 3 for the alleged rape and sexual abuse of 299 victims. Most of the alleged victims were children who were his patients, in what investigators and his own notebooks describe as a pattern of violence spanning over three decades.
Le Scouarnec will face hundreds of victims during what is predicted to be a four-month trial in Vannes, Brittany. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Le Scouarnec is already serving 15 years for a different rape and sexual assault of a child conviction from 2020.
The doctor does not deny the allegations but claims he does not remember everything.
Le Scouarnec’s trial is a result of many activists in France trying to change the culture and climate of sexual abuse in France. Child protection and women’s rights groups and medical community associations have called for a rally in front of the courthouse where Le Scouarnec will be tried.
The case was jumpstarted in 2017, when a 6-year-old neighbor of Le Scouarnec claimed he had touched her over the fence separating their properties. Authorities searched his home and discovered more than 300,000 photos and 650 video files of pedophilic, zoophilic and scatological material. Police additionally found notebooks where Le Scouarnec described himself as a pedophile and detailed his actions towards his victims.
In the 2020 trial, Le Scouarnec had admitted to child abuse dating back to 1985 but was never prosecuted for those offences due to the statute of limitations expiring.
The Vannes trial is set to prosecute Le Scouarnec for additional alleged rapes and other abuses committed between 1989 and 2014. 158 men and 141 women are set to testify against Le Scouarnec, with the average age of those testifying being 11 at the time of the assaults.
The investigation documents allege that Le Scouarnec sexually abused both boys and girls when they were alone in their hospital rooms.
Le Scouarnec’s lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, told in a press conference that his client had decided to finally “face up to reality.”
Le Scouarnec had already been convicted in 2005 for possessing and importing child sexual abuse material and sentenced to four months of suspended prison time. Despite that conviction, he was appointed as a hospital practitioner the following year.
Child protection groups across France are joining the proceedings as civil parties to set a firm legal precedent and prevent similar cases of abuse in the future.
