Joël Le Scouarnec faces trial for abuse of 299 victims

The trial of Joël Le Scouarnec, a 74-year-old former physician and surgeon, is proceeding before the Morbihan criminal court. The case involves massive allegations of sexual violence committed between 1989 and 2014 across approximately a dozen hospitals in western France.

Investigators have identified 299 victims, with an average age of 11 at the time of the offenses. The charges include 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults, aggravated by the abuse of his professional position. A central piece of evidence in the case is a collection of personal diaries discovered during a 2017 search, which reportedly contain detailed descriptions of the victims, their ages, and the locations of the acts.

Le Scouarnec faces a potential maximum sentence of approximately 20 years of imprisonment.