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Europe|Trial Opens for French Doctor Accused of Abusing Hundreds
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/world/europe/france-surgeon-trial-patient-abuse-le-scouarnec.html
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A former surgeon is accused of raping or sexually assaulting 299 people, mostly children, over 25 years. It is considered to be the country’s largest-ever pedophilia case.
Feb. 24, 2025Updated 7:54 a.m. ET
A former surgeon went on trial in western France on Monday on charges that he raped or sexually assaulted hundreds of people, most of them former pediatric patients, in what is widely considered the biggest pedophilia case in French history.
The former surgeon, Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is accused of raping or sexually assaulting 299 people over 25 years, between 1989 and 2014. Almost all of the victims are his former patients, and almost all of them were children at the time of the alleged abuse. The average age of the patients he is accused of sexually assaulting was 11.
The trial opened in the coastal town of Vannes, in Brittany, where Mr. Le Scouarnec was led in by police officers at the start of the trial.
Wearing a black vest, with a bald head and a ring of white hair on the sides, he spoke clearly as the court confirmed his name, date of birth and other biographical information.
“Your profession before you were incarcerated?” Aude Buresi, the presiding judge, asked.
“Surgeon,” Mr. Le Scouarnec answered calmly.
The proceedings are expected to last nearly four months.
Mr. Le Scouarnec’s listed victims were spread around the west of France, following his career as he moved from the Indre-et-Loire area to Brittany, and finally south to Charente-Maritime, working in several private clinics and public hospitals.
