French prosecutors on Tuesday disclosed that a 79-year-old former educator has been charged with aggravated rape and sexual assault involving 89 minors across several countries over a period spanning more than five decades.
Speaking to reporters in the southeastern city of Grenoble, prosecutor Etienne Manteaux said the suspect, Jacques Leveugle, was indicted in 2024 and has remained in custody since then. In an unusual step, authorities publicly identified the suspect in a bid to encourage witnesses and any additional victims to come forward.
Leveugle, born in 1946 in Annecy, is accused of committing the offences between 1967 and 2022 in multiple countries, including Germany, Switzerland, Morocco, Niger, Algeria, the Philippines, India, Colombia and the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. According to the prosecutor, the alleged crimes occurred while he was working as a freelance teacher and instructor.
Manteaux said Leveugle held various roles during that period, including teaching French and serving as an instructor in speleology, the study and exploration of caves.
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Investigators identified the victims through documents compiled by the suspect and stored on a USB drive. The writings referred to what he described as “sexual relations” with minors aged between 13 and 17. The USB device was reportedly discovered by Leveugle’s nephew, who had been questioning his uncle’s emotional and sexual life. The material consisted of what the prosecutor described as 15 volumes of written records.
During the course of the investigation, Leveugle also confessed to killing two relatives decades earlier. According to Manteaux, he admitted suffocating his terminally ill mother with a pillow in the 1970s and later killing his 92-year-old aunt in a similar manner while she was asleep in the 1990s.
The prosecutor said Leveugle had written in his memoirs that he had “killed two people,” adding that investigations into those admissions are ongoing.