Protesters hold up signs, some bearing the names of Joël Le Scouarnec's victims in Vannes, France, May 28, 2025. LOUISE QUIGNON/DIVERGENCE
She was the last to approach the witness stand at the courthouse in Vannes, in western France, on Thursday, December 4. Like many lawyers before her, Nathalie Ferreira insisted on pleading one final time in the epilogue of the Joël Le Scouarnec trial before the criminal court of the Morbihan department of the Brittany region.
On May 28, 2025, Le Scouarnec was sentenced to 20 years in prison for rape and sexual assault of 298 victims, acts committed in clinics where he worked between 1989 and 2014. The harrowing trial lasted more than three months. Now, the court must rule on the damages owed to the victims. Ferreira referred to it as "fair compensation." "Compensation for suffering," some grimaced. "What amount can match the pain?" asked Francesca Satta, lawyer for around 10 plaintiffs, during the first civil hearing on Monday, November 3. "These payments will not erase anything. They are nonetheless a matter of respect and dignity for our clients."
In a courtroom with increasingly empty benches, the lawyers took turns pleading, fixing their gaze on presiding judge Aude Burési. During the trial, they sought eye contact with Le Scouarnec above all, to confront him. But the "devil in a white coat," as the prosecutor had called him, was absent. He chose not to attend these final hearings. The court had to settle for the memory of his faint voice admitting the facts, claiming not to remember the assaults he had nonetheless recorded in notebooks and expressing hope that the victims could rebuild their lives.
