Le Scouarnec case: the staggering number of rapes and sexual assaults for which the former surgeon will be tried

An extraordinary trial lasting several months is looming for former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, 73, who has been sent to the Morbihan criminal court for rape and sexual assault on nearly 300 victims, many of whom were minors.

After “nearly four years of investigation”, an investigating judge in Lorient issued an indictment order on Friday sending Joël Le Scouarnec to the Morbihan criminal court and “retaining 300 acts committed against 299 victims”, announced the Lorient prosecutor in a press release on Monday.

Mr. Le Scouarnec, already sentenced in 2020 to 15 years in prison, this time faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, the magistrate added. This order, currently being notified according to the prosecutor, is subject to appeal, which would postpone a trial by several months.

Reached by AFP, Mr. Le Scouarnec's lawyer, Thibaut Kurzawa, had not yet been notified. The trial should be held in 2025, possibly as early as “the first half of the year”, the public prosecutor of Rennes, Thierry Pocquet du Haut Jussé, told journalists on September 26. The trial should be held in Vannes and last “three to four months”, he added.

Placed in detention, Joël Le Scouarnec had been charged with rape and sexual assault on 312 potential victims identified in light of his "notebooks", reporting sexual abuse over a period of 30 years. The average age of the victims, of both sexes, is 11 years old, the investigation established. Some victims were excluded from the proceedings due to the statute of limitations.

300,000 child pornography images

The indictment order is "fairly broadly consistent with the purpose" of the final indictment issued on 5 July, requesting that Mr Le Scouarnec appear for the offences of "aggravated rape and aggravated sexual assault", except for “some partial dismissals” and “some reclassifications”, the prosecutor specifies.

It was the complaint in 2017 by a neighbor, a six-year-old girl, in Jonzac (Charente-Maritime), that brought to light this gigantic case of pedophilia guided by the chilling writings of the surgeon found at his home in 2017. In his house in Jonzac, in Charente-Maritime, where the man lived as a hermit with dolls, the police seized more than 300,000 images of a child pornography.

And it was the discovery of thousands of pages of listings and diaries typed on his computer that propelled the case into extraordinary dimensions. Day after day, this specialist in digestive surgery recorded the names of his alleged victims, associated with a litany of stories of assaults during his 30-year career in hospitals in central and western France.

In December 2020, the Charente-Maritime Assize Court sentenced the former surgeon to 15 years in prison for sexual assault on one of his nieces and a young patient in the 1990s, as well as rapes of another niece, during the same period, and of her six-year-old neighbor.