The women took the stand in the trial of Joel Le Scouarnec, a former surgeon accused of raping or sexually assaulting hundreds of children who were his patients.

Months after the Gisèle Pelicot case rocked France, Le Scouarnec is accused of raping or abusing 299 victims, most of them young children at the time. View on euronews

The son of a retired French surgeon accused of raping and sexually assaulting hundreds of young patients told a court on Tuesday that Joel Le Scouarnec was a good father - but that the crimes he is accused of are unforgivable.

The numbers involved in France’s largest child abuse trial are staggering: 299 alleged victims, sexually abused in 10 hospitals and clinics over 25 years – all by one doctor, prosecutors say.

Marie, 35, that they believed he had been sexually abused two decades earlier by a surgeon who treated him for appendicitis, he thought it was a prank. Louis-Marie is one of 299 people, most of them children at the time,

Maxime Tessier, one of the lawyers of French surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec accused of raping or abusing 299 people, mostly child patients, speaks to the media at the Vannes courthouse, western France, on the opening day of the trial, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025.

Defendant Joël Le Scouarnec's chillingly detailed notebooks —which he used to document sexual violence that spanned decades — are central to the trial.

Two sons of Joel Le Scouarnec, a French former surgeon on trial for the alleged assault or rape of 299 patients, told a court Tuesday of the devastation their father's