A former French surgeon was to go on trial on Monday charged with raping or sexually assaulting almost 300 patients, most of them children and some of them unconscious at the time.
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Joel Le Scouarnec, 74, is already in jail after being found guilty in 2020 of abusing four children.
In the latest trial, he faces allegations that he assaulted or raped 299 patients, many while waking up from anaesthetic or during post-op check-ups, at a dozen hospitals between 1989 and 2014.
Some 256 of the victims were under 15, with the youngest aged one and the oldest 70.
It was not known whether Le Scouarnec would admit the charges at the trial in the western city of Vannes that is likely to be a new shock for France.
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The proceedings come just two months after Dominique Pelicot was convicted of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife Gisele Pelicot, who has since divorced him and become a feminist hero for refusing to be ashamed.