French investigators have begun a search for further victims of a paedophile surgeon on trial for raping or sexually assaulting 299 mostly young patients, after he admitted all the charges in what was described as a “turning point” in France’s largest child abuse case, reports The Guardian.
Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, had said “I committed heinous acts” at the opening of the trial last month but previously only acknowledged the abuse on a case-by-case basis and had denied several of the charges.
His lawyer, Maxime Tessier, told reporters his client had admitted that all those mentioned in his handwritten notes – reported to be more than 300 names – had been abused. He said the surgeon had told the court, which was sitting in private: “I have a duty to tell the truth.”
The public prosecutor’s office in Rennes has opened a fresh investigation to identify and trace other victims mentioned in Le Scouarnec’s writings, one document of which was headed: “My paedophile letters.”
Le Scouarnec’s admission came after 10 days of evidence from some of the 158 male and 141 female victims, most of whom were under the age of 15, at the trial in Vannes, western France. The court has heard how most of them were abused while under anaesthetic or recovering from operations between 1989 and 2014, when the surgeon worked in a dozen public and private medical establishments across Brittany and western France.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.