- The trial of Joël Le Scouarnec, accused of sexual assault on four minors, was postponed until October due to the coronavirus crisis.
- Suspected of having abused at least 349 children in just over thirty years, this 69-year-old surgeon was to appear before the Assize Court of Charente-Maritime, in Saintes, for a first case of rapes and sexual assault.
- Pending this dismissal, Joël Le Scouarnec remains in pre-trial detention, under criminal arrest warrant.
The trial in Saintes (Charente-Maritime) of surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, accused of sexual assault on four minors, was postponed until October due to the coronavirus crisis. This trial, the first part of a very large pedophilia case, began on Friday and was to last until Tuesday.
Suspected of having abused at least 349 children in just over thirty years, this 69-year-old surgeon was to appear before the Assize Court of Charente-Maritime, in Saintes, for a first case of rapes and sexual assault. In this case, he is accused by four victims: two of his nieces, now in their thirties, a patient whom he allegedly abused during an operation for acute pancreatitis when she was only four years old, and his former little neighbor when he lived in Jonzac (Charente-Maritime), therefore.
It was she who allowed his arrest. Coming back from a walk, one evening in April 2017, she points to her neighbor through the whiskers in the garden and says to her father who is accompanying him: "This gentleman, he made me see his dick ..." At that moment- there, Jérôme L. confides that he wanted to “die”. Calmed by his stepfather, he recovered and called the gendarmes.
Joël Le Scouarnec remains in pre-trial detention
Beyond the horror of the facts, the main issue of this trial was also to understand how Joël Le Scouarnec could continue to perform the surgery for so long without being worried. In 2005, during a first trial in Vannes (Morbihan) for possession of child pornography images, he was sentenced to four months suspended prison sentence without obligation to care. A decision which did not seem to have had any consequences on his career. Joël Le Scouarnec seems to have taken advantage of the omerta which reigned in a family where the cases of incest were made “from father to son”, according to a source close to the file.
"At the request of several lawyers for the civil parties, with whom the lawyer for the accused joined, and because of the health crisis caused by the Covid 19, the Assize Court of Charente Maritime ordered the dismissal of the trial of Joël Le Scouarnec in October 2020 (precise date not communicated to date) ", said the Assize Court in a press release. Pending this dismissal, Joël Le Scouarnec remains in pre-trial detention, under criminal arrest warrant.
Our file on the coronavirus
In parallel, the investigators continue to try to find all the potential victims of the surgeon by going up his writings. Directed by the Lorient public prosecutor's office (Morbihan), they had identified 349 as of February 11, of which 246 have already filed complaints. Facts which should be the subject of another trial in the years to come.
Justice
Le Scouarnec case: Justice orders that the trial of the “Jonzac surgeon” be in camera
Justice
Le Scouarnec affair: First meeting at the conference for the “Jonzac surgeon”
- Poitou-Charentes
- Justice
- Joël Le Scouarnec