They expected a lot from this hearing, but the first day of the trial of Joël Le Scouarnec, this Monday, November 30, was placed under the sign of disappointment for the civil parties.
The former digestive surgeon is tried before the Assize Court of Charente-Maritime for sexual assault and rape on four victims, all minors at the time of the facts, the first legal aspect of a sprawling case of pedophilia.
Indicted in October for acts committed during more than thirty years of hospital career - 312 victims officially counted by justice in a parallel investigation still in progress - Joël Le Scouarnec must answer, in Saintes, of acts committed in his entourage in the 1990s and on a small neighbor, in 2017, in Jonzac.
It was she who had given the alert, allowing investigators to uncover the surgeon's “black notebooks”, and with them the dozens of names of alleged victims.
"Very strategic amnesias"
"It is time he confessed, it is unbearable to hear for them," responded the lawyer for the parents of the little neighbor on the sidelines of the hearing, closed to the press and the public.
Me Francesca Satta spoke of a "disappointing" first day of hearing, during which the accused did not give himself up, bypassing the embarrassing questions to hold his line of defense: recognize sexual assault to better deny rape.
To an expert psychiatrist, who had testified in the morning, Joël Le Scouarnec would never have spoken of "fantasies" about his writings - hypothesis developed by his lawyer Me Thibault Kurzawa.
Writings which nevertheless describe in great detail the abuse imposed on small victims, including digital penetrations.
At the same time, the accused allegedly maintained to the same expert that he had never committed rape ...
A contradiction that was not enough to make him crack, on this first day devoted to his personality, he who, in appearance, looks like a quiet grandfather.
"He is a very methodical person with very strategic amnesias", noted Me Laure Boutron-Marmion, lawyer for Face à inceste, one of the many child protection associations that has been set up. civil party.
Confronted with the facts of which he is accused on his two nieces, the man would have evaded the questions of his sister, who came to testify in the afternoon.
"Minimum declarations"
During the initial trial, started in March but which had to be interrupted after a day due to the general containment against the Covid-19 epidemic, the accused had let himself be overcome by emotion.
"It's not you, the culprit, it's me," he had then assumed to his sister, in tears, who expressed his terrible guilt: while she had confronted him about the abuse of his daughters, he had sworn to her that he would never do it again.
And she had believed it ...
"Today we are very far from the posture of truth announced this morning," said Boutron-Marmion.
He is very clever, very intelligent even in his management of the audience, ”she said, referring in particular to occasional lapses of memory about her nieces.
“It is much more closed than during the trial started in March, also regrets Me Céline Astolfe, lawyer for the Foundation for Children.
His spontaneity is reduced, we are on minimum declarations… When we ask him questions, he does not answer, we are even less advanced than the first time ”.
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Other relatives, in particular the wife of Joël Le Scouarnec, suspected of not having denounced her husband, are expected this Tuesday morning at the bar.
The verdict - he faces twenty years in prison - is expected Thursday, his 70th birthday.