The trial of 'France's biggest paedophile offender' opens in Vannes, Brittany, on Monday

Starting this Monday, the Morbihan criminal court will try Joël Le Scouarnec, suspected of being France's biggest paedophile criminal, for aggravated rape and aggravated sexual violence against 299 victims, most of them children. For these crimes committed over 30 years with complete impunity, the 74-year-old former surgeon faces a maximum sentence of 20 years' imprisonment.

Le Scouarnec has "acknowledged his involvement" in the majority of the rapes and sexual assaults of which he is accused, according to Lorient prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger, who will lead the prosecution in Vannes.

Joël Le Scouarnec had already been given a four-month suspended prison sentence in October 2005 by the Vannes Criminal Court for possession of child pornography images.

He was then sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment in 2020 for rape and sexual abuse of four minors, and lodged an appeal, but withdrew a year later.

He was finally charged in this second case with rape and sexual assault of more than 300 potential victims.

"Undoubtedly the biggest paedophile crime case in France".

The trial, which begins on 24 February and has already been labelled "out of the ordinary", is expected to last four months and has required a courtroom specially created for the occasion. In the absence of space, the city is making available the premises of its former law faculty, located just 300 metres from the court. One of the amphitheatres in the building will be reserved for the civil parties and their families. They will be able to follow the proceedings live.

"This is undoubtedly the biggest paedophile crime case in France, or at least the case with the most victims sexually assaulted or raped by a single man. And the scale of the ensuing trial is commensurate with the scale of this case", one judicial player commented in the French daily Le Figaro.

In total, Joël Le Scouarnec will stand trial for 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults, aggravated by the fact that he abused his position as a doctor.

158 male and 141 female victims were recorded. On the eve of the start of the trial, 202 civil parties were registered. The average age of the victims at the time of the events was 11.

For the doctor's 15 patients (including, in particular, the four victims in the first part of the 2020 trial), the statute of limitations has expired, enabling a sort of "double penalty".

The trial is expected to cost the Ministry of Justice nearly €3 million in reconfiguration the premises, purchasing and installing technical equipment, mobilising additional staff and compensating victims' travel expenses. An estimated €1.2 million has already been spent.

During the trial, several sequences will take place behind closed doors. However, it would be sufficient for a single civil party to request that the trial be closed to the public for it to be granted, and for the entire Le Scouarnec trial to take place without the press or the public.

This trial is also "out of the ordinary" because the victims were not aware of the assaults they had suffered. They discovered the facts decades later, when they were questioned by the gendarmes. Many of the victims suffered traumatic amnesia, partially or completely erasing their memory of the doctor.

Throughout the trial, the civil parties will be able to count on the support of the France Victimes 56 association, which will provide a legal expert and a psychologist to accompany them. A legal assistance dog has also been offered to those who will have to testify in court.

To ensure the peace of mind of the civil parties, who will be facing a large number of journalists, a system of necklaces - green or red - will be put in place to indicate whether or not they wish to be interviewed or filmed.

Around 300 journalists representing some one hundred media outlets have been accredited for the trial, but many will not be present in full.

Sixty-five lawyers will be on hand to assist the victims during the hearings, which will only take place in the afternoon.

Known throughout the community, free from suspicion

Aged 66 at the time of his arrest on 2 May 2017, Joël Le Scouarnec was a well-known digestive surgeon in the commune of Jonzac (Charente-Maritime), free from any suspicion. His career spans 36 years: the day before his arrest, he had just retired.

The case began with statements made by a six-year-old girl living in Jonzac. In April 2017, she told her parents that her neighbour, a 66-year-old doctor at the time, had exposed himself to her before sexually assaulting her.

During the search, the gendarmes found several dolls, around 70, boys and girls, from infants to 12-year-olds. Joël Le Scouarnec had attached dildos to some of them. His home was full of sex toys, wigs and child pornography.

Hard drives containing more than 300,000 documents, some of them extremely violent, were found under his mattress.

There were also photomontages made by the surgeon from photographs of children, as well as other evidence of sadomasochistic, scatophilic and zoophilic activities with his pets.

Above all, the investigators came across what they dubbed the surgeon's "black notebooks". These are handwritten notebooks in which Joël Le Scouarnec wrote child pornography stories over a period of thirty years.

Joël Le Scouarnec committed his crimes as and when he was on duty. He was a contract surgeon and over the course of his career worked in around fifteen hospitals: in Lorient (56), Quimperlé (29), Le Mans (72), Nantes (44), Saint-Brieuc (22) and Flers (61). It was at the Sacré-Coeur clinic in Vannes, where he worked regularly between 1994 and 2003, that he claimed the most victims. Probably more than two hundred.

He committed his paedocriminal acts against both girls and boys. Some were only a few months old, others were adults. Of the 299 victims identified by the Lorient public prosecutor's office, 256 were under 15 at the time of the crime.

Timetable of proceedings

The first two weeks of the trial will be devoted to the defendant's character investigation, the progress of the investigation and the testimony of those close to him.

His ex-wife (who claims she never suspected her husband was a paedophile, despite an initial conviction for possession of child pornography in 2005) is expected to take the stand from Tuesday.

Presided over by Judge Aude Buresi, the Morbihan criminal court will follow the chronological order of the sexual assaults committed by Le Scouarnec.

Some forty civil parties have already exercised their right to be heard in camera.

On 19 May, the court will hear evidence from a number of former senior hospital and health officials. According to confidential documents consulted by French news agency AFP, some of them had been informed of the surgeon's first conviction as early as 2006, without his career being affected.

The doctor remained in practice for a further eleven years, continuing to commit acts of alleged sexual violence against the children he operated on.

After a day devoted to the psychiatric examination of the accused (20 May), the 63 lawyers for the civil parties will give their closing arguments (22-28 May), followed by the closing arguments on 2 June and the defence on 3 June.

Joël Le Scouarnec will make his final remarks to the court on the same day, or the following day, before deliberations from 4 to 6 June and a verdict the following day.