A French surgeon who sexually assaulted 299 patients, most of them minors, is facing a 20-year prison sentence.

 The public prosecutor's office on Friday requested a 20-year prison sentence for former surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, who is accused in France of sexually assaulting 299 patients, most of whom were minors, and raping some of them. This is the maximum possible sentence in the case.

Le Scouarnec, 74, has been on trial before the criminal court in Vannes (western France) since February 24, accused of committing 111 rapes and 189 sexual assaults between 1989 and 2014 in approximately 12 hospitals. This is one of the largest child sex crimes cases heard by the French judiciary to date.

Prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger on Friday called on judges to impose a 20-year prison sentence for the accused, "with a special safety period of two-thirds of the sentence, given the seriousness" of the crimes attributed to Le Scouarnec.

He also requested a special measure, "security detention," applied after the convicted person has served their sentence, "due to the serious disturbances in his personality and the danger resulting from these disturbances in terms of the risk of recidivism."

The prosecutor's requests included permanently banning Joel Le Scouarnec from practicing medicine or any other health profession, and prohibiting him from working with minors or owning animals, due to his bestial tendencies.

He also called for Le Scouarnec to be stripped of his civil and family rights for ten years.

Investigators were able to track down Le Scouarnec's victims, patients whose average age was 11 at the time of the attacks, by examining his diaries, which were found during a search of his home in 2017, after a six-year-old neighbor reported him to her parents for rape.

His highly detailed writings detailed the names, ages, and addresses of his victims, as well as the violence he inflicted on them, often under the guise of medical treatment.

The 74-year-old former surgeon admitted during his trial that he was "responsible for a large majority of the facts." Maxime Tessier, Joël Le Scouarnec's defense attorney, told the court during the trial, which is taking place in the western French city of Vannes, "The accused admits responsibility for a large majority of the facts."

The former doctor was previously sentenced in 2020 in Saintes (central-western France) to 15 years in prison for raping and sexually assaulting four children, including two of his relatives.