France makes international appeal over ex-teacher accused of raping 89 children | France
French police have launched 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 to 2022.
Grenoble police said Jacques Leveugle, who has been in pre-trial detention in France since April 2025, was a “textbook example” of serial sex offenders in an unusually sprawling case spanning countries from Germany to India over five decades.
Grenoble prosecutor Étienne Manteaux said Leveugle also told police he killed his terminally ill mother and later his elderly aunt by smothering her with pillows.
Manteaux, who called on potential victims and witnesses to contact the French police, said that Leveugle worked with children in Germany, Switzerland, Morocco, Niger, Algeria, the Philippines, India, Colombia and France’s overseas territory of New Caledonia from the 1960s to 2022.
“He traveled to these different countries and met young people wherever he settled to work as a tutor or teacher,” Manteaux said. The prosecutor said Leveugle, who was born in the Alpine town of Annecy, appeared “cultured and charismatic” and cared for children.
Although he never gained a formal teaching qualification, Leveugle had worked as an educator from the 1960s. He also worked as a sports observer in canyoning, caving and youth camps. He worked with juvenile delinquents in Germany, took many private lessons, and worked as an educator at a juvenile home in Bogotá, Colombia.
The French gendarmerie made a statement Online appeal showing images of Leveugle at different ages He talked about the countries he lived in.
Leveugle was placed under official investigation in France in February 2024 for aggravated rape and sexual assault of minors and has been in pre-trial detention since last April.
The lawsuit focuses on Leveugle’s own writings about his activities with children; Leveugle compiled it into a digital “memoir” that was found on a USB drive by his nephew and turned over to authorities, investigators said.
Prosecutors say 15 volumes of text written by Leveugle allowed investigators to identify 89 victims from 1967 to 2022, who ranged in age from 13 to 17 at the time of the alleged attacks.
French police are trying to reach more potential victims or witnesses in the countries where Leveugle worked. “If victims want to come forward, they should do so now because we need to close this investigation in 2026 so that the trial can be held within a reasonable amount of time,” Manteaux said.
Leveugle’s computer logging is reminiscent of last year’s trial of former French surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing hundreds of patients, most of them under the age of 15, in the largest child abuse case in French history. Le Scouarnec also kept records on his computer. Victims and children’s rights advocates said Le Scouarnec’s case highlighted systemic flaws that allowed him to repeatedly commit sexual offenses without being detected.
Leveugle told police that he smothered his mother, who had terminal cancer, with a pillow in the 1970s, according to the prosecutor. He also said he smothered his 92-year-old aunt with a pillow in the 1990s.
Meanteaux said Leveugle told him he wanted to go home after visiting his aunt, who begged him to stay. “He decided to kill her too, so he took a pillow and smothered her while she was sleeping,” the prosecutor said.
Manteaux said Leveugle wrote in his “memoirs” that he “killed two people.”
The prosecutor said the suspect “justified his actions by saying that he would want someone to do the same for him if he found himself in such an end-of-life situation.”
