After seven years of investigation, the investigations have been completed in the case of Le Scouarnec, a former surgeon indicted for rape and sexual assault.
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The investigating judge responsible for investigating former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec – indicted for rape and sexual assault in a case involving nearly 300 children – has completed her investigations, after seven years of investigation , reveals, Thursday April 25, franceinfo.
The magistrate who is investigating this voluminous file – several hundred thousand pages – has just warned the accused and the civil parties. The prosecutor must now make his submissions and say whether he wants the former surgeon to be put on trial. It will then be the turn of the investigating judge to make her final decision and to say, in the coming months, whether she will refer the former surgeon to the Assize Court.
“There will undoubtedly be a trial”
“This end of the investigation is a long-awaited act” by the victims, reacts to franceinfo master Frédéric Benoist, lawyer of the association The Voice of the Child, civil party in this case. “Joël Le Scouarnec has exhausted all avenues of appeal, which was his strict right. Now, the victims’ strict right is to obtain a hearing, there will undoubtedly be a trial”, continues the lawyer who hopes that it will take place “in the first half of 2025”. According to him, “It will be an extraordinary trial. It is normal that each victim can be present and represented.”
Francesca Satta, lawyer for around ten civil parties, affirms that “the victims are waiting for justice to be done.” “The time for justice is what it is,” she continues, “it is always too long in the face of the pain felt, in the face of the need to be repaired and to resume, if possible, the course of a normal life” . She assures that‘”it is time for a legal response to be made, thereby putting a stop to the unbearable.”
For his part, Maître Maxime Tessier, one of Joël Le Scouarnec’s lawyers, declares: “We expected it, it allows us to consider what happens next. This new phase will allow us to argue, to look fact by fact. The defense will play its role, we expect there to be a trial”.
In the event of a trial, it is likely to last several months. In this case, 293 people are currently recognized as civil parties by the Rennes Court of Appeal. As a reminder, initially there were 312 victims in this case but in December 2022 the Rennes Court of Appeal excluded 19, because of the statute of limitations. Symbolically, some victims want the hearing – if it takes place – to be held in the major trial room of the Paris Assize Court where Salah Abdeslam, one of the perpetrators of the November 13 attacks, was tried.
Up to 20 years of criminal imprisonment
Joël Le Scouarnec is suspected of having been active for 23 years, between 1991 and 2014 almost everywhere in the west of France: Finistère, Morbihan, La Rochelle, Indre-et-Loire, Tours… During the investigation , sprawling, investigators found a notebook of several thousand pages in which this 73-year-old man wrote down the names of his victims. He described the sexual practices he allegedly had with them. In more than half of the cases, the little victims were boys. The ex-surgeon met them in the hospitals where he worked.
Described as distant and detached during his interrogations, Joël Le Scouarnec admitted certain facts with which he is accused. Facts mainly of sexual assault and not the most serious, those of rape. In this case, he risks up to 20 years of criminal imprisonment. The former surgeon – currently in prison – was already sentenced in December 2020 by the Assize Court of Saintes (Charente-Maritime), to 15 years of criminal imprisonment for rape and sexual assault on minors: a little neighbor, two of his nieces and a former patient at the Loches clinic (Indre-et-Loire) where he worked.