The trial begins for the French surgeon accused of raping or abused by 299 people, mostly patients with children

Vannes, France – a former surgeon is to be tried on Monday in France for the alleged rape or sexual abuse of 299 victims, most of their children who were patients, in what investigators and their own notebooks describe as a model of violence. It stretches over three decades.

Joël Le Scouarnec, now 74 years old, will face hundreds of victims during a four -month trial at Vannes, Brittany. He is facing up to 20 years in prison, if he is sentenced, in addition to 15 years, he served after being found guilty in 2020 for rape and sexual aggression of children.

He does not deny the accusations, although he says he does not remember everything. Some survivors have no memory of the attacks, being unconscious at that time.

The process of them Sciuarnec comes while the activists are pushing to raise the taboos that have long surrounded sexual abuse in France. The most prominent case was that of Gisèle Pélicot, who was drugged and raped by her ex -husband and dozens of other men who were convicted and convicted in December in terms of imprisonment between three and 20 years.

The child protection groups and for women’s rights and medical community associations on Monday asked for a meeting in front of the Court where they will be tried.

The case began in 2017, when a 6-year-old neighbor said that Scouarnec touched it over the fence that separates their properties.

A subsequent search for his house has discovered over 300,000 photos, 650 pedophile, zoophile and scatological video files, as well as notebooks where he described as a pedophile and detailed his actions, according to the investigation documents.

In 2020, Le Scouarnec was convicted for rape and sexual aggression of four children, including two granddaughters, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He admitted to abuses of children from 1985-1986, but some cases could not be prosecuted, because the limit of limitations expired.

The Vannes process will examine alleged rapes and other abuses between 1989 and 2014 against 158 ​​men and 141 women who were 11 years old on average at that time.

The doctor has sexually abused both boys and girls when they were alone in their hospital rooms, according to the investigative documents.

“I didn’t remember the operation. I remembered post-operative, a surgeon who was quite bad ”, one of the victims, Amélie Lévêque, remembered about her time in the hospital, when she was 9 in 1991.” I cried a lot. “

Years later, she described the overwhelmed sensation when she learned that her name appeared in Le Luuarnec’s notebooks.

“This was the beginning of the answers to a life of questions, and then it was the beginning of the descent into hell,” she said the public broadcaster France 3. “I felt that I lost control over everyone. I wasn’t crazy, but now I had to face the truth of what happened. “

“I fell into a deep depression. … My family tried to help, but I felt completely alone. “

Associated Press does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified or decide to tell their stories publicly.

Le Scouarnec’s lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, told the Sud-Ouest newspaper, his client will “answer the judges’ questions”, because he decided to “face reality”.

The Scouarnec had already been convicted in 2005 for the possession and import of sexual abuse materials on children and sentenced to four months of suspended prison. Despite this conviction, he was named the hospital practitioner the following year.

Some children’s protection groups have joined the procedure as civil parties, saying they hope to strengthen the legal framework to prevent such abuses.

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Vaux-Montagny reported from Lyon, France. Sylvie Corbet, the writer of Associated Press, contributed to this report.