A Tennessee man accused in lawsuits of drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women received a 95-year prison sentence Monday for other types of offenses: the production of child sex abuse images and an escape from an inmate transport van.

A former surgeon accused of raping or sexually assaulting hundreds of young patients, some while they were under anaesthetic, went on trial on Monday in France's largest ever child sexual abuse case.

A former surgeon is set to stand trial in France on Monday for the alleged rape or sexual abuse of 299 victims, most of them children who were his patients, in what investigators and his own notebooks describe as a pattern of violence spanning over three decades.

The numbers involved in France’s largest child abuse trial are staggering: 299 alleged victims, sexually abused in 10 hospitals and clinics over 25 years – all by one doctor, prosecutors say.

The white-haired 74-year-old, who wore glasses and a black zip-up sweater over a grey shirt, was addressing the court in Vannes, north-west France, on the first day of the largest child abuse trial in French history.