If the figures do not say everything, they allow to grasp the singularity and the scale of the Le Scouarnec affair.
349 potential victims were first counted by analyzing the written computer and handwritten traces discovered at the home of the ex-digestive surgeon in May 2017 in Jonzac (Charente-Maritime).
After two years of preliminary investigation, the gendarmes of the Poitiers research section and the Morbihan group succeeded in identifying and contacting 343 people.
It was impossible to find the trace of the other six people from the meager clues the investigators had.
There then remained a thorny factual and legal analysis to sort out the facts "prosecutable" in court and those, on the contrary, subject to the "ax of prescription".
Finally, 312 victims resisted this filtering.
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"It was a careful questioning at all times, explains Stéphane Kellenberger, prosecutor of the Republic of Lorient.
The first facts dating from 1986, the last from 2014, it was necessary to combine six successive legal texts on prescription ”.
Because only the law in force at the time of the facts counts.
However, until 1989, the minor victims of rape had only ten years to denounce the facts after their commission.
Then, the deadline was extended to ten years beyond the majority of the victim, that is to say until the age of 28 years.
Since 2018, this deadline has been set at 30 years after reaching the age of majority.
"It is indeed a legal innovation"
But in the Le Scouarnec case, it is all the complexity of this case, the victims were not necessarily aware of the facts.
For the good reason that they were under anesthesia or in the recovery room when the former digestive surgeon allegedly attacked them.
Most of these ex-patients were therefore not aware of their victim status until the gendarmes responsible for the preliminary investigation contacted them.
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It is in this context that the prosecutor of Lorient, under the leadership since last March of Stéphane Kellenberger, has decided to resort to "the jurisprudential theory of the insurmountable obstacle".
This legal notion is linked to article 9-3 of the Penal Code which provides that “the existence of an insurmountable de facto obstacle making it impossible to initiate or exercise public action is a cause of suspension of the prescription ".
Clearly, the limitation period, in these specific cases, does not begin until the alleged victims are informed of the facts.
Never until now, the French justice had yet applied this concept in matters of rape and sexual assault.
“This is indeed a legal innovation that should be welcomed as such, congratulates Me Marie Grimaud, lawyer in charge of the defense of several victims of Joël Le Scouarnec.
This is a major step forward.
Initially, this notion of insurmountable obstacle applied to financial crimes which could only manifest themselves when the accounts were published.
Then, from a judgment of the Court of Cassation dating from 2014, case law extended to criminal matters ”.
This in the context of the Cottrez case, named after a caregiver found guilty of the murder of eight of her infants.
55 people released from the prescription
“This choice of the prosecutor is courageous and saving, abounds Me Francesca Satta, lawyer of five of the 312 victims involved in the judicial investigation opened Thursday.
It was not obvious.
This decision is necessarily motivated by the fact that a large number of victims could benefit from it ”.
In all, 55 people, men and women alike, were taken out of the clutches of the prescription in this way.
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The only downside, this strategy can also offer a catch to the defense of Joël Le Scouarnec who will not fail to remind, when the day comes, that for these 55 cases, the accusation is based only on the writings of the respondent.
Finally, despite the legal creativity of the Lorient prosecutor's office, 26 victims could not be included in the procedure.
Not only because the facts were too old for some but also because the victims in question had memories of what they had suffered.
One more paradox in this decidedly extraordinary affair.