Victims of Joël Le Scouarnec share his impact on their lives as French trial goes on
Joël Le Scouarnec, a once highly respected surgeon, is now standing trial after being charged with raping and sexual abusing 299 people, many of whom were children.
VANNES, France — For more than three decades, Stéphanie kept a dark secret: The “adored” doctor who had been like a second father had repeatedly raped her when she was a child.
Now 46, she is one of three victims who shared their stories about her alleged abuser, Joël Le Scouarnec, a once highly respected surgeon who is now standing trial in what is considered France’s largest ever pedophilia case, charged with raping or sexually abusing 299 people, all of them former patients and most of them children under the age of 15.
“He took me to dance class, to flute competitions,” Stéphanie said in one of a series of interviews last month. “He raped me in the car.”
“I never spoke up when I was a child,” she said, adding that she hoped sharing her experience would help other victims of abuse to find “the strength to break free and speak out.”
The closest she came to telling her family about her abuse was in January 2017, after her sister Christine died in a car crash at age 56. But she stayed silent for the same reason she always had — to protect her mother.
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