Le Scouarnec trial: "I committed heinous acts," confesses the accused

And suddenly, at 1:05 p.m., the man everyone was waiting for entered the dock. A bald head except for a crown of white hair, glasses, dark jacket: that's how Joël Le Scouarnec appeared, a 74-year-old retired doctor, who is being tried from Monday, February 24 by the Morbihan criminal court for sexual assaults and aggravated rapes of 299 patients, mainly minors, between 1989 and 2014. At the invitation of the president of the court, Aude Buresi, the accused gave his name in front of a packed main courtroom and cameras broadcasting the hearing in three deportation rooms. "Joël Le Scouarnec, born December 3, 1950 in Paris." "What was your profession before being incarcerated?" the magistrate asked. "Surgeon," the main person concerned replied before sitting down again.

Also read : “Without doubt the biggest case of pedocriminality in France”: the trial of Joël Le Scouarnec, a sprawling affair with 299 potential victims

Joël Le Scouarnec spoke only once, at the very end of the day. But his short opening statement set the tone for the next three months. "If I appear before you, it is because, while for the most part they were children, I committed heinous acts. If I understand and sympathize with the suffering that the very great violence of [my] writings may have caused in each of these people, I have tried throughout my interrogations to recognize what constituted acts of rape and sexual assault, but also to specify what in my eyes were not ," declared the accused in a calm voice marked by age. "I am perfectly aware today that these wounds are indelible, irreparable; I cannot go back. I owe it to all these people and their loved ones to take responsibility for my actions and the consequences they may have had and will probably continue to have throughout their lives."

^Mr. Maxime Tessier, one of the two defense lawyers, confirmed this position of his client. "Mr. Le Scouarnec was questioned for five months in Lorient, during nearly 49 interrogations [during the investigation, Editor's note]. He admitted his guilt for the most part. He could have been mute, casual, aggressive in his language... We have an accused who wants to make himself available, even despite his age, to the court and the parties. [...] He wants to become better."

As one sign that the "Le Scouarnec trial" is definitely an "extraordinary" trial, the presiding judge Aude Buresi and the attorney general Stéphane Kellenberger also made opening statements on the first day of this hearing scheduled to last until June. "The departmental criminal court will judge Joël Le Scouarnec for several weeks on 300 charges. I would like to address each and every one of you," said the magistrate, who actually had a word for each category of actors involved in the hearing. "Mr. Le Scouarnec, you are neither an object of curiosity, nor a subject of study, nor a societal debate, but an accused who has a certain number of rights," she notably reminded, assuring the defense that "neither the label 'major trial', nor the number of accredited media, nor the resources deployed will have any weight on the decision that will be rendered."

For his part, the attorney general stressed that the Morbihan criminal court was not judging "a case or documents, but a man, indicted before the courts for facts for which he will have to answer one by one" . Considering that the court was preparing to "judge the heart of the unbearable" and evoking the "intense, terrible and polymorphous cruelty" of this case, Stéphane Kellenberger assured that "this trial [was] above all intended for the victims" , who "are living the unspeakable" .

"Everything in this terrible case has proven to be out of the ordinary: the notebooks, the investigation - which was disrupted for a time by the pandemic - this reverse process of revelations going from investigators to the people who suffered the facts brought to light when most of them had no memory of them," stressed the prosecution representative. "We are aware that the 20 years of criminal imprisonment incurred at the maximum may seem ill-suited to those who have endured and are still enduring," he concluded, recalling in passing the maximum sentence incurred by Joël Le Scouarnec, who should know his fate at the beginning of June.