French surgeon accused of raping and abusing 299 children admits guilt, lawyer says
A former surgeon on trial in France for sexually abusing 299 of his patients has admitted his guilt for all the victims, one of his lawyers said on Thursday.
Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, has been on trial in the city of Vannes since early March, in one of the country's largest child sex abuse cases.
He is charged with assaulting or raping the patients, many while under anaesthesia or waking up after operations, at a dozen hospitals between 1989 and 2014.
'I have a duty to tell the truth,' Le Scoaurnec said during Thursday's trial behind closed doors, his lawyer Maxime Tessier told AFP.
Tessier said he had asked Le Scouarnec if he admitted that the numerous people mentioned in notebooks seized by investigators were 'all potential victims of his acts and he said: 'Yes.''
The 745-page indictment listed 158 men and 141 women, most of whom were under the age of 15 at the time of the events.
Until now, Le Scouarnec had only admitted to his guilt on a case-by-case basis as the proceedings progressed, with attention focussed on the notebooks in which he meticulously recorded the abuse he inflicted on his victims.
During the investigation he had denied many of the accusations, insisting he was merely performing his medical duties.
'I asked the court to record in the minutes of the proceedings that Mr Le Scouarnec had admitted his guilt for the 299 charges,' Tessier said.
'Admission is a crucial step in allowing victims to move on, and it is good that it has happened at this stage of the trial,' said Frederique Giffard, a lawyer representing around 15 civil parties.
'I think that he finally understood, by listening to the civil parties taking the stand over the last 10 days, that he was not going to be able to credibly maintain his position of continuing to deny the facts in certain cases,' Giffard told AFP.
The former surgeon is already in jail, having been found guilty in 2020 of abusing four children, including two of his nieces.
The surgeon was never investigated during his career despite a 2005 sentence for owning sexually abusive images of children.
He continued to work until his retirement in 2017, after which a six-year-old accused him of rape and police discovered diary accounts of abuse stored on his computers.
The former medic described sex scenes involving scores more children in his diaries. They were named, allowing police to track them down to obtain their testimony, leading to additional charges.
In December, Laureline Peyrefitte, chief prosecutor of the town of Lorient in Brittany, north-west France, said the number of possible victims stood at 349.
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