Before the first testimonies of the victims, Joël Le Scouarnec, accused of sexual assault and rape on patients, apologized on Wednesday, March 5, in particular to a six -year -old girl.
Ex-Usurgal Joël Le Scouarnec has been comparing since February 24 for alleged acts of sexual assault and rape committed on nearly 300 patients, whose average age is 11 years. This Thursday, March 6, the first testimonies of the victims were heard. Since Tuesday, the accused has not said that he no longer wants to say “lies”. The latter has notably recognized rape that he had denied so far as well as a case of chemical submission.
However, he did not admit all the facts, still arguing that some were “purely medical” acts. However, these gestures were found mentioned in his notebooks in which he recorded the abuse inflicted on the victims. “If I performed a medical act, when I came back to my house, I thought about it but in another form, in a sexual connotation,” he justified.
This Wednesday, Joël Le Scouarnec addressed the victims. “I owe them the truth to each of them,” he said. He wants to “hide nothing anymore”. “I send them all my apologies for the harm I have made to them,” he said before the Morbihan criminal court, before adding: “if there is only one to whom my depositions can allow us to resume the path of normal life, it would be extraordinary for me”. During this story, the ex-Usurgian has let his emotions appear. He also assured that he was ready to speak following the speeches of the civil parties, but not “in general”.
The accused also returned to a particular case: the rape of his 6 -year -old neighbor in 2017, the facts for which he was already sentenced in 2020 to fifteen years in prison. He thus pronounced the term “child rapist” which he had at the time refused to recognize. “I would like to ask for forgiveness from this little girl and I also think of her parents, completely devastated,” he said this Wednesday.
The sincerity of his apologies is however called into question by the lawyer of several complainants, Me Francesca Satt. “I can hardly believe in the credibility of his tears, to this accused who breaks down but who immediately becomes a man under hypercontrol,” she told AFP.