French surgeon accused of raping 299 patients while they were unconscious on stretchers during examinations

Joël Le Chornec, a French surgeon accused of raping or sexually assaulting 299 young people, some of whom were minors, while they lay unconscious on the operating table, will be tried in 2025 in a trial that is set to cause a stir. The latter promises to attract huge media attention. born for that Mazaan,

Stefan Kellenberger, the prosecutor of Lorient (Brittany, West), explained this Monday in detail some aspects of the investigation that ended last July and said that he is waiting for a definite date to be set for the process, regarding which In 1875 he predicted that it would happen in Vannes. , in the northwest of the country, in the first half of next year.

After four years of instruction, researchers have been able to determine that le shorneckWho is currently 72 years old. Sexually abused 299 patients The various hospital establishments where he worked between 1989 and 2014, all of them in the north-east of France.

Kellenberger indicated that Average age of victimsThere were 158 men and 141 women 11 yearsOnly 14 were over 20 years of age and 256 were under 15 years of age at the time of the incidents. The prosecutor assured that 111 cases could be considered aggravated rape and the rest as aggravated sexual assault.

The defendant in this case, whom the prosecutor considered “exceptional” due to the high number of victims, faces up to 20 years in prisonWhich will be added to the 15 for which he was already accused for the rape of some neighbours’ daughter in 2020.

During this investigation, agents found some notebooks from the surgeon’s house. He was writing down the identities of his victims chronologically. And the abuses inflicted on each of them.

Because, as the prosecutor insisted, he did not remember anything, because he was either unconscious or in the process of resuscitation, so He had no knowledge of the facts.

However, he added, the psychiatric examinations he was subjected to revealed variations in post traumatic sequence Which may be related to abuse.

The prosecutor said, in separate interrogations of Le Chornec during the four-year investigation, the accused identified a good part of the facts, as well as his ‘modus operandi’ and strategies to avoid surprises.

The defendant, whom Kellenbarger described as someone with “an unusual personality.” He had already been condemned for suspicion in 2006But various hospital services took no action, leading the prosecutor to launch a parallel criminal investigation into a possible cover-up of crimes.

The Mazan trial has been going on in Avignon since September A man accused of giving drugs to his wife So that when she is unconscious, other people can rape her, for which there are a total of 51 accused.