He could go down as the worst pedophile criminal in the history of France: A now 74-year-old surgeon is accused of sexually assaulting and/or raping some 300 female and male patients over several decades in hospitals in the west of the country.

Most of his victims were minors.

Around 200 suspected victims, who were between 18 months and 70 years old at the time of the alleged crimes, will give testimony on Monday in the trial in Vannes on the coast of Brittany. Many hope that the four-month-long proceedings will provoke public outrage.

From around 1990, the surgeon described his crimes in a diary. Investigators found his notes in 2017 during a house search carried out after a 6-year-old girl told her parents that their neighbor, a surgeon, had raped her and the parents filed a complaint.

At the end of 2020, a court sentenced the doctor to 15 years in jail for the rape and sexual assault of the girl, as well as of a female patient and two of his nieces. All the victims were underage.

The investigators also launched another probe in to more than 300 other cases, which led to the present trial. Many of the victims were still under the effects of the anesthetic following operations and only learned from investigators that they might have been raped.

But for Homayra Sellier, the president of the child welfare association "Innocence en........

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