VANNES, France — A retired surgeon accused of raping and sexually assaulting 299 people admitted in court that he committed “hideous” acts, as France’s largest ever child sexual abuse case got underway on Monday.
“If I am appearing before you it’s because one day, when most of these people were just children, I committed hideous acts,” Joël Le Scouarnec said in a sober voice after Judge Aude Buresi, the president of a five-judge panel hearing the case, asked if he had a statement to make.
Le Scouarnec, who was wearing a black coat and glasses, added that he was prepared to take responsibility for his actions “and the consequences they may have had and may have for the rest of their lives.”
It was unclear how many victims the 74-year-old was referring to in his brief statement at the Palais de Justice in Vannes, a small town in Brittany, northwestern France.
A courtroom sketch of French retired surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec.
Defense lawyer Maxime Tessier told reporters outside court that Le Scouarnec, who is currently serving a 15-year sentence for the abuse of four other children, has admitted to the “vast majority,” of the charges but not all of them.
Amélie Lévêque, 42, who has accused the surgeon of raping her when she was just 9 years old and under anesthesia, is expected to testify against him during the trial, told NBC News she “didn’t think much” of Le Scouarnec’s words.
“I don’t really believe he is sincere,” she said. “But I think it’s good that they made him give this little speech. We’ve always said he was silent.”
Solène Podevin, the president of the Confronting Incest Association, also pointed out that he had acknowledges responsibility, “but not necessarily for all the acts.”
The trial, expected to last four months, will put a spotlight on the French medical system, which allowed him to continue working despite many warning signs, including a 2005 conviction for possessing images depicting child abuse that he downloaded from an internet site monitored by the FBI.
Some of the victims’ lawyers have said the once-respected local doctor should have been stripped of his medical privileges.
Instead, Le Scouarnec, a father of three, moved on to other public hospitals and private clinics in five regions of France, where he specialized in appendectomies, abdominal and gynecological surgery.
“If it wasn’t for the FBI, we wouldn’t have traced this back to Joël Le Scouarnec,” said Francesca Satta, a lawyer for several of the victims.
The trial is expected to feature hundreds of witnesses, among them Le Scouarnec’s niece and a family friend, both now in their 40s, who say they were assaulted in the early 1980s. Those allegations occurred too long ago to be prosecuted under French law.
Amelie Leveque is expected to testify at some point during the trial.
Much of the evidence against Le Scouarnec was carefully chronicled by the surgeon in digital diaries he kept on hard drives seized by investigators in the spring of 2017, after the mother of his 6-year-old neighbor reported that he had raped the girl after luring her across a mesh fence in their gardens, prosecutors said.
After his arrest, Le Scouarnec told investigators during several interrogations that he was “obsessed and tyrannized” by his “pedophile fantasies” and began recording them in diaries, according to an outline of the case by the investigating judge.
Those digital files date to the early 1980s and include the names of patients and others, including young family members, along with their ages, addresses and a detailed account of what was done to them, the court documents show.
When investigators searched Le Scouarnec’s house in May 2017, they found thousands of child pornography images as well as photos of the doctor performing sex acts on dolls and animals, according to a report by the investigating judge. Around 5,000 videos of a “violent nature” were also found, some showing acts of torture, the report said.
In 2020, Le Scouarnec was convicted of raping the young neighbor and three others when they were children. He is currently serving 15 years in prison. He faces an additional 20 years if convicted of the latest charges — a sentence that lawyers say would run concurrently.
Files in the courtroom of the Criminal Court in Vannes, on Monday.
The average age of the alleged 158 male and 141 female victims in the current trial is 11. The majority — 256 — were under the age 15 at the time they were assaulted, most of them under the effects of anesthesia or recovering from surgery, prosecutors allege.
Court officials say they struggled to find venues large enough to stage the trial, which is expected to cost €3 million ($3.14 million). In the end, they decided to broadcast the trial in a former university building, around five minutes’ walk from the courthouse in the center of Vannes, a Breton town with medieval ramparts, canals and a port dotted with sailboats.
Victims and their families will be watching the trial on a screen in a 450-seat auditorium.
The more than 450 journalists who have been accredited to cover the trial can watch a live feed in another part of the building, away from the victims. Testimony will play out in the main courthouse, with around 60 lawyers cycling through before the trial wraps up in mid-June.
For many victims, that distance from their abuser was the latest blow in a process which has often made them feel sidelined, said lawyer Marie Grimaud, who is representing 37 of them.
“Everything is conspiring to make us invisible and to keep us at a distance, as if we were only second-rate players in this trial,” reads an open letter Grimaud released on behalf of her clients.
But Lévêque, who learned about her alleged rape from investigators, said she preferred to stay far away from the doctor.
“I feel protected.” she said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
