Former French teacher charged with abusing 89 teenagers dating back decades

A French prosecutor has made public the identity of a 79-year-old man accused of raping and sexually assaulting 89 minors over more than five decades, launching an appeal for witnesses and possible victims in what authorities described as an unusually sprawling case spanning multiple countries.

Grenoble prosecutor Etienne Manteaux said the suspect, Jacques Leveugle, also acknowledged killing his mother and aunt, prompting a parallel investigation.

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

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He had worked in schools, as a private tutor and as a cave exploring guide, among other roles, the prosecutor said.

The serial rape case hinges on writings investigators say were compiled by the suspect himself in a digital "memoir" found on a USB drive by a relative, and later turned over to authorities.

Prosecutors say the texts — described as 15 volumes — enabled investigators to identify 89 alleged victims, boys aged 13 to 17 at the time of the alleged assaults, from 1967 to 2022.

Manteaux said the suspect's writings describe sexual acts with minors in multiple countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Morocco, Algeria, Niger, the Philippines and India, as well as the French territory of New Caledonia.

He added that he chose to publicise the man's name to encourage other victims to speak out. People under investigation in France are not normally named.

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"This name must be known because the goal is to allow possible victims to come forward," he said at a news conference yesterday.

Authorities set up a hotline and released photos of Laveugle over the decades, and said anyone who believes they were a victim or has information should contact them.

The prosecutor said investigators had hoped to identify all alleged victims without a public appeal, but found that the documents often contained incomplete identities, complicating efforts to locate people decades later.

"We thought we would be able, internally, to identify all the victims," Manteaux said, but "we realised we were up against a wall".

Manteaux also said the suspect has acknowledged smothering his mother to death when she was in the terminal phase of cancer, and later killing his 92-year-old aunt.

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Regarding the aunt, Manteaux said the suspect told investigators that "because he had to return to the Cévennes (region of France) and she begged him not to leave, he also chose to put her to death."

France is still reeling from the Gisele Pelicot case, one of the country's most shocking recent sexual violence trials, in which a husband was convicted of drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her over many years.

In both cases, investigators say, a digital trail proved decisive - recordings and files in Pelicot's case, and the USB drive in the Grenoble investigation.

Manteaux emphasised the need to move quickly in investigating Laveugle's alleged rapes.

"There is urgency," he said on RTL radio, citing the suspect's age and the difficulty of tracing victims across 55 years.

Investigators said the alleged assaults occurred in France and in foreign countries, where authorities say the man worked as an educator.

He spent many years in Morocco working as a tutor for low-income families, where he is suspected of abusing at least 10 victims, the prosecutor told The Associated Press in a written statement.

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