GRENOBLE, France: French prosecutors on Tuesday (Feb 10) announced that a 79-year-old former educator had been charged in 2024 for aggravated rape and sexual assault committed against 89 minors in multiple countries between 1967 and 2022.
Prosecutor Etienne Manteaux spoke to reporters in the southeastern city of Grenoble to publicise the case and appeal for witnesses and any other potential victims to come forward.
In an unusual move, he named the suspect, Jacques Leveugle, born in 1946 in Annecy, an Alpine town an hour’s drive away from Grenoble.
He has been in custody since his indictment in 2024, the prosecutor said.
The crimes against the minors were allegedly committed in Germany, Switzerland, Morocco, Niger, Algeria, the Philippines, India, Colombia, and the French overseas territory of New Caledonia, where he worked as a freelance teacher and instructor, Manteaux said.
His varied roles included instructor of speleology, or the science of caves and French teacher.
The number of victims was established from writings compiled on a USB drive by the man, which refer to “sexual relations” with minors aged 13 to 17.
The USB stick on which the documents were stored by the man was discovered by his nephew, who was “questioning his uncle’s emotional and sexual life”, Manteaux added.
It is a document of “15 tomes”, he said.
During the investigation, the man also confessed to suffocating his mother, a terminally ill cancer patient, with a pillow in the 1970s, according to the prosecutor.
He also suffocated his 92-year-old aunt “while she was asleep” – also with a pillow – in the 1990s, the prosecutor said.
In his “memoirs”, the man had written that he had “killed two people”, Manteaux said.