The document should have looked like an announcement or an invitation, a sheet of paper encircled by black lines on which a few words would have been written: "Destroy everything without reading anything." The letter would have been laid on top of three or four hard drives and a USB stick that the children would have found when their father died. Of course, they would have done as told.

Since February 24, the USB stick and hard drives have been displayed in large sealed bins in front of the criminal court in Vannes, Brittany, where Dr. Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is on trial for rape and sexual assault against 299 alleged victims, most of whom were minors at the time of the events. They contain the "journal" that the surgeon secretly kept for 30 years.

Now at the heart of one of France's biggest pedocriminal cases, the document has become an exhibit, a crime scene and a reconstruction of the facts. Across thousands of pages, the accused recorded his sex life "without any restraint." At the hearing, judge Aude Buresi read a first extract, set in the Lorient hospital: "Saturday, April 10, 2004. 8.15 am – In the bathroom in Lorient. While smoking my morning cigarette, I reflected on the fact that I'm a big pervert. I'm an exhibitionist, a voyeur, a sadist, a masochist, a scatologist, a fetishist and a pedophile all rolled into one. And I'm very happy about it."

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