France faces its largest child abuse trial, weeks after country was rocked by Pelicot case

The numbers involved in France’s largest child abuse trial are staggering: 299 alleged victims, sexually abused in nine hospitals over 25 years - all by one doctor, prosecutors say.

As the court case began Monday in Morbihan, Brittany, with retired gastrointestinal surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec accused of decades of abuse, many hoped that the trial would mark a turning point in France’s reckoning with child abuse.

From 1986 to 2014, the former surgeon, now 74 and serving a 15-year prison sentence for a prior conviction for the rape and abuse of children, subjected hospital patients as young as two to early adulthood to sexual abuse including rape across the Brittany region of France, court documents allege. Le Scouarnec was employed in private and public institutions despite being convicted of possession of child abuse imagery in 2005.

The documents alleged that Le Scouarnec told investigators that “he did not remember (the alleged assaults) individually,” but “he had been able to commit sexual touching as well as penetrations on some of his patients, and in particular children.”