Tessier said he had asked Le Scouarnec if he admitted that the numerous people mentioned in notebooks seized by investigators were “all potential victims of his acts and he said: ‘Yes’”.
“I asked him if he agreed that the 299 charges were [criminal] offences and he said: ‘Yes’,” Tessier added.
Until now, Le Scouarnec had only admitted to his guilt on a case-by-case basis as the proceedings progressed, with attention focused on the notebooks in which he meticulously recorded the abuse he inflicted on his victims.
During the investigation he had denied many of the accusations, insisting he was merely performing his medical duties.
“I asked the court to record in the minutes of the proceedings that Mr Le Scouarnec had admitted his guilt for the 299 charges,” Tessier said.
“Admission is a crucial step in allowing victims to move on, and it is good that it has happened at this stage of the trial,” said Frederique Giffard, a lawyer representing around 15 civil parties.
“I think that he finally understood, by listening to the civil parties taking the stand over the last 10 days, that he was not going to be able to credibly maintain his position of continuing to deny the facts in certain cases,” Giffard told AFP.
The former surgeon is already in jail, having been found guilty in 2020 of abusing four children, including two of his nieces.
The surgeon was never investigated during his career despite a 2005 sentence for owning sexually abusive images of children.
He continued to work until his retirement in 2017, after which a 6-year-old accused him of rape and police discovered diary accounts of abuse stored on his computers.
- Agence France-Presse
