A 74-year-old surgeon accused of abusing 299 individuals, most of them youngsters, whereas they had been anaesthetised or recovering from operations has advised a French court docket he did “hideous issues” and is ready to take duty for them.
Joël Le Scouarnec is accused of raping or sexually abusing the victims, whose common age was 11, throughout a 30-year profession, and detailing the abuse in notebooks.
“I’ve carried out hideous issues,” the 74-year-old advised a court docket in Vannes on Monday, the opening day of his trial. He stated he was “completely conscious that these wounds can’t be erased or healed” and he was able to “take duty” for his actions.
Virtually all the kids had been unaware of the alleged abuse till police knocked at their doorways having found their names within the handwritten “black books” discovered at Le Scouarnec’s house.
The abuse is alleged to have taken place between 1989 and 2014, when Le Scouarnec labored at greater than a dozen non-public and public hospitals in Brittany and different components of western France.
In 2017, neighbours in Jonzac, north of Bordeaux, reported Le Scouarnec to police. In 2020, he was convicted for the rape or sexual assault of 4 youngsters, together with a younger hospital affected person. He was sentenced to fifteen years and is presently in jail.
When detectives searched his house they discovered exhausting disks containing greater than 300,000 photographs and movies that includes little one sexual abuse, in addition to notebooks recording particulars of the alleged abuse of sufferers. Officers additionally found a set of dolls, some lifesize, underneath the floorboards.
In a single notice, Le Scouarnec is alleged to have written: “I’m a paedophile and I at all times will probably be.”
The trial, which is predicted to final 4 months, may even concentrate on how Le Scouarnec was allowed to proceed working on youngsters regardless of having been convicted and given a four-month suspended sentence for possessing little one sexual abuse photographs in 2005.
His employers and the skilled physique for docs, L’Ordre des Médecins, had been knowledgeable, as was the French ministry of well being. No motion was taken.
Greater than 60 legal professionals are representing the victims and their households, who will give proof subsequent month within the chronological order wherein the abuse is alleged to have taken place. 2 hundred and fifty-six of the victims had been underneath 15, with the youngest aged one and the oldest 70.
Certainly one of Le Scouarnec’s legal professionals, Maxime Tessier, advised the court docket his consumer admitted to the “overwhelming majority” of the fees. Le Scouarnec’s former spouse and his three youngsters are anticipated to present proof on Tuesday. Different members of the surgeon’s household will probably be questioned the next day.
Marie, a type of looking for justice on the court docket in Vannes, stated: “I need all our trauma to be recognised. They’ll inform us that it’s in our head, nevertheless it’s been there for years and even earlier than we knew what he did to us.”
Earlier than the trial opened, Frédéric Benoist, a lawyer for the kid safety affiliation la Voix de L’Enfant (Little one’s Voice), a civil celebration within the case, stated it was “scandalous” that L’Ordre des Médecins was included within the case together with the victims.
Negar Haeri, a lawyer representing the order, stated they had been “defending the collective pursuits of the career that had been sullied by the alleged actions of Joël Le Scouarnec”.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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