But Le Scouarnec was “a monster who made his workplace his hunting ground”, Satta said, adding: “The trial will also open the door to a real judicial examination of child abuse in France and how it should be handled, in terms of sentencing and prevention.”.
France braces for trial of surgeon accused of sexually abusing hundreds of children Joël Le Scouarnec has been charged with the rape or sexual assault of 299 patients from 1989 to 2014.
Satta said the second trial, in which Le Scouarnec faces 20 years in prison, would show how failings by the justice and health system had enabled him to keep offending.
Frédéric Benoist, a lawyer for the child-protection charity La Voix de L’Enfant (The Child’s Voice), a civil party in the case, highlighted what he called a shocking “chain of failings and dysfunction” at an institutional level that had allowed Le Scouarnec to continue offending for years.
Satta said it was devastating for many of the alleged victims, now in their 30s and 40s, to hear passages from Le Scouarnec’s diaries that allegedly concerned them as children.
