• The former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec is presented as the author of numerous acts of rape and sexual assault, often on minors.

  • The one who has long practiced in Morbihan noted the names of his victims in a small notebook.

  • Among the 312 identified victims, 19 have just been excluded from the proceedings due to the statute of limitations.

Sentenced in 2020 to fifteen years in prison for rape and sexual abuse of four minors, Joël Le Scouarnec is far from done with justice.

The former surgeon is suspected of having multiplied rapes and sexual assaults throughout his career as a doctor.

After the denunciation of the facts by a child in 2017, the investigators had determined that the victims of the surgeon were very numerous, in particular by the discovery of notebooks on which the doctor noted the names of all his victims.

An investigating judge had indicted him for 312 acts of rape and sexual assault and sent him to the Assize Court.

A large part of them are in Lorient and Morbihan, where the surgeon practiced in the 1990s.

Certain facts requalified… And prescribed

This staggering number of victims, the defendant's lawyer has been trying for months to lower it, in particular by invoking the prescription of certain facts.

Seized by his counsel, the investigating chamber of the Rennes Court of Appeal studied each of the 85 cases contested by the lawyer.

The court overturned the order of the investigating judge for 19 victims, dismissing them from the proceedings.

In a press release, the Court of Appeal justifies itself by evoking a requalification of certain facts as “indecent assaults”, whose rules of limitation are shorter.

In some cases, the lack of material evidence proving that the victim was asleep or anesthetized at the time of the events was also considered.

This decision was the subject of two cassation appeals.

One comes from Joël Le Scouarnec's lawyer,

Our file on the Le Scouarnec affair

The acts of rape were allegedly committed between 1986 and 2014 in various establishments in which the 72-year-old former surgeon practiced, notably in Charente-Maritime and Brittany.

Several reports had been established in particular in 2006 when the medical commission of the hospital of Quimperlé had alerted its director, questioning the capacity of Dr Le Scouarnec to keep “all his serenity when he intervenes with young children”.

The surgeon had been able to continue to practice.

And to hurt.

Justice

Le Scouarnec case: The surgeon sentenced to 15 years in prison for pedophilia retried on appeal in Poitiers

Miscellaneous facts

"Predator of the woods": A man indicted and imprisoned for serial rapes between 1998 and 2008

  • Joel Le Scouarnec

  • Rape

  • sexual assault

  • child crime

  • child pornography

  • assize court

  • Doctor

  • Surgery

  • Poitou-Charentes

  • Company

  • Lorient

  • Brittany