France makes international appeal over ex-teacher accused of raping 89 children

Police search for more possible victims of Jacques Leveugle, whose alleged crimes span many countries and date back to 1960s

ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS for THE GUARDIAN

French police have made a rare international appeal for victims and witnesses in the case of a 79-year-old former teacher accused of raping and sexually assaulting 89 children across five continents from the 1960s until 2022.

Police in Grenoble said Jacques Leveugle, who has been in pretrial detention in France since April 2025, was a “textbook example” of a serial sexual offender in an unusually sprawling case spanning many countries from Germany to India over more than five decades.

The Grenoble prosecutor, Étienne Manteaux, said Leveugle had also told police he had killed his terminally ill mother and later his elderly aunt by suffocating them with pillows.

Appealing for potential victims and witnesses to contact French police, Manteaux said Leveugle had worked with children in Germany, Switzerland, Morocco, Niger, Algeria, the Philippines, India, Colombia and the French overseas territory of New Caledonia from the 1960s to 2022.

“He travelled in these different countries and in every place where he settled to work as a tutor, or teacher, he met young people,” Manteaux said. Leveugle, who was born in the Alpine town of Annecy, appeared “cultured and charismatic” and groomed children, the prosecutor said.

Despite never gaining an official teaching qualification, Leveugle had worked as an educator from the 1960s. He also worked as a sports monitor in canyoning and speleology, and in youth camps. He worked with young offenders in Germany, took many tutoring jobs and was an educator in a children’s home in Bogotá, Colombia.

The French gendarmerie issued an online appeal showing pictures of Leveugle at different ages and stating the countries he had been living in.

Leveugle was placed under formal investigation in France in February 2024 for aggravated rape and the sexual assault of minors and has been held in pretrial detention since last April.

The case centres on Leveugle’s own writing about his activities with children, which investigators said he compiled in a digital “memoir” found on a USB drive by a nephew and turned over to authorities.

Prosecutors say the 15 volumes of texts written by Leveugle had enabled investigators to identify 89 alleged victims, boys aged 13 to 17 at the time of the alleged assaults, from 1967 to 2022.

French police are seeking to reach further potential victims or witnesses in the countries where Leveugle worked. “If victims want to come forward, they should do that now because we need to close this investigation in 2026 in order to hold a trial in a reasonable time frame,” Manteaux said.

Leveugle’s record-keeping on his computer echoes the case last year of the former French surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, who was sentenced to 20 years for the sexual abuse of hundreds of patients, mostly aged under 15, in what was the biggest child abuse trial in French history. Le Scouarnec also kept records on his computer. Victims and child rights advocates said Le Scouarnec’s case highlighted systemic flaws that allowed him to commit sexual crimes repeatedly without being detected.

Leveugle told police he had suffocated his mother, a terminally ill cancer patient, with a pillow in the 1970s, according to the prosecutor. He also said he suffocated his 92-year-old aunt, also with a pillow, in the 1990s.

Meanteaux said Leveugle had described wanting to go home after visiting his aunt who had begged him to stay. “He decided to kill her too, so while she was asleep, he took a pillow and suffocated her,” the prosecutor said.

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