VANNES, France – A French court is to give its verdict Wednesday in the trial of a surgeon who admitted to sexually abusing hundreds of patients over more than two decades, in one of the country’s largest child sex abuse cases.
Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, is already in prison after being sentenced in 2020 to 15 years for raping and sexually assaulting four children, including two of his nieces.
In this trial, which began in February, he has admitted sexually assaulting or raping 299 patients — 256 of them under 15 — in hospitals in western France between 1989 and 2014, many while they were under anaesthesia or waking up after operations.
Le Scouarnec is charged with 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults and is set to emerge as one of the most prolific convicted sex predators in France’s history.
The victims have been represented by around 60 lawyers.
“I hope the verdict will be commensurate with the horrors he committed,” Amelie Leveque, one of the victims, told AFP.
“But I don’t believe it very much.”
Victims and child rights advocates say the surgeon’s case highlights systemic shortcomings that allowed Le Scouarnec to repeatedly commit sexual crimes.
Prosecutor Stephane Kellenberger on Friday requested the maximum 20-year sentence for the retired surgeon and also made the rare demand that he should be held in a centrt for treatment and supervision even after any release.
“I am not asking the court for leniency,” Le Scouarnec said in his closing statement in Vannes in the western region of Brittany on Monday.
“Simply grant me the right to become a better person,” he said.
