Global call for witnesses as teacher accused of rape

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.

- Angelique Chrisafis

Police in Grenoble said Jacques Leveugle, who has been in pretrial detention in France since April 2025, was a “textbook example” of a serial offender in an unusually sprawling case spanning many countries from Germany to India from the 1960s until 2022.

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 make contact, 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.