"Me, these stories about flies, it's not my problem": at the Le Scouarnec trial, the surreal testimony of the last friend of the accused

2017. The year of the "explosion" , of the "atomic bomb" , the one that allowed "tongues to loosen" after years of "omerta" , especially within the family. In May 2017, Joël Le Scouarnec, a visceral and digestive surgeon at the Jonzac hospital (Charente-Maritime), was arrested after the rape of his little neighbor, aged 6. At his home were found countless dolls, child pornography images, notebooks and computer files in which the doctor had recorded, for decades, his pedocriminal actions on hundreds of patients, mainly minors.

A discovery that paved the way for a first trial concerning four victims, which took place in 2020 before the Charente-Maritime Assize Court, then a second, which is currently taking place before the Morbihan Criminal Court, for sexual assaults and aggravated rapes on 299 patients. In 2020, Joël Le Scouarnec was sentenced to fifteen years of criminal imprisonment. He faces twenty…