Former surgeon stands trial: What is the story behind France's largest child sexual abuse case?

France’s largest ever child sexual abuse trial opened in Brittany on Monday, with 74-year-old former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec charged with raping or abusing 299 victims.

Le Scouarnec is accused of mainly targeting child patients, who were aged 11 on average at the time of his alleged abuses that spanned a period of 25 years, from 1989 to 2014.

"I have committed despicable acts," Le Scouarnec told the opening of his trial on Monday. "I am perfectly aware that these wounds are indelible, beyond repair."

One of his alleged victims, Annabelle*, was summoned in 2019 by police investigators for a hearing which would change her life. 

"She discovered that Le Scouarnec had raped her when she was 11, while being treated for appendicitis in hospital", Gwendoline Tenier, Annabelle’s lawyer, told Euronews.

The incident happened in 2001 in a hospital in Brittany where Annabelle’s mother worked as a care assistant and Le Scouarnec had been practising for years, according to Tenier.

The retired surgeon is accused of disguising the abuse he carried out as medical acts, targeting young patients who were less likely to understand what was going on.

Many survivors say they have no memory of the assaults, which allegedly occurred when they were unconscious or under general anaesthetic.

"At first Annabelle didn’t realise that the documents being read by the police were talking about her, nor that what the legal jargon was really saying is that she had been raped", added Tenier. 

Rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Le Scouarnec against 158 men and 141 women are set to be examined over the course of the trial.

The former surgeon faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, on top of 15 years he has been serving after being found guilty in 2020 of rape and sexual assault of four children.

The victims included his six-year-old neighbour, a four-year-old patient and two of his own nieces, who were aged just four when the abuse started.

A seven-year long investigation

The trial — which is set to last four months — is the culmination of a seven-year long investigation, which began when a six-year-old neighbour told her parents that Le Scouarnec had touched her over the fence which separated their properties.

Police searched Le Scouarnec's home and discovering his diaries in which he is alleged to have meticulously catalogued the instances of rape and abuse, alongside the victims' names. In one entry, he allegedly wrote: "I am a pedophile, and I always will be".

A collection of dolls, drawings of naked children, and hard disks containing at least 300,000 photos and videos featuring child sexual abuse were also found at the property, according to investigation documents.

Le Scouarnec had been convicted in 2005 for possessing and importing child sexual abuse material and sentenced to four months of suspended prison time. This came after French authorities received a tip off from the FBI, who said that his credit card had been used to access a dark web Russian child sexual abuse site.

Although one of Le Scouarnec's colleagues reported him to the French medical professional body in 2006, no subsequent action was taken. In 2008, he was appointed as a hospital practitioner by the Jonzac hospital in the department of Charente-Maritime.

'Facing up to reality'

Le Scouarnec told the court on Monday that he acknowledges committing rapes and sexual assaults. But he claimed not to remember everything, and said he regards himself as not guilty of those crimes in some of the cases.

His lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, told the French newspaper Sud-Ouest before the trial that his client would "answer the judges' questions" as he had decided "to face up to reality".

The trial comes as activists are pushing to lift taboos that have long surrounded sexual abuse in France, months after the Gisèle Pélicot case drew to a close. Gisèle's now ex-husband Dominique Pélicot and dozens of other men were convicted and sentenced in December to three to 20 years in prison for repeatedly drugging and raping her.

Many campaigners and lawyers are calling for answers about how Le Scouanec was allegedly able to abuse victims for more than a decade despite his prior conviction and the fact that a colleague had warned the medical professional body in France.

"His status as a surgeon allowed him to go unquestioned," said Tenier, Anabelle's lawyer. "If he hadn't had this job he wouldn't have had access to all his victims, but the people around him also wouldn’t have been able to ignore what was going on."

Concerns over victim support

Certain lawyers have also accused France Victimes — France's victim support service which works on behalf of the ministry of justice — of failing in their duties.

Lawyer Marie Grimaud, who represents a collective of 37 victims, told French radio RTL that France Victimes had "mishandled" her clients.

For Tenier, it is a similar story.

"My client [Annabelle] was never called by France Victimes after the brief 30-minute hearing she had with investigators," she told Euronews.

"France Victimes needs to be proactive by contacting victims. My client needed to understand what the legal jargon investigators read to her meant, but also to know what steps she should take after receiving the shocking news", Tenier added.

The organisation told Euronews it had done its all to help Le Scouarnec's alleged victims.

"We have been proactive but we are limited by budgetary issues, we assist 1.5 million victims every year in France, but we do not have the means to assist 5 million victims", said spokesman Jerôme Moreau.

The CIIVISE — which is France's Independent Commission on Incest and Child Sexual Abuse — reported that 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence every year in France. There are a total of 5.5 million victims in the country who were abused during their childhood, most often within their family or close circle, the organisation says.

*Euronews has changed the victim's real name to Annabelle to protect her identity