France uncovers a new case of serial rape: a man confesses to assaulting 89 minors over five decades

ParisFrance has uncovered a new case of a serial rapist targeting children and teenagers. The public prosecutor's office announced on Tuesday that a 79-year-old man has confessed to sexually assaulting 89 minors, all boys, between the ages of 13 and 17 at the time of the crimes, which he allegedly committed between 1967 and 2022 in various countries. The pedophile, born in Annecy, was arrested more than two years ago, but the case had not been made public until now. The Grenoble prosecutor's office decided to release the information—without providing details of the case. modus operandi of the rapist—to try to find all the victims. So far, only half have been identified.

According to the account of Grenoble prosecutor Étienne Manteaux, the man was arrested after his nephew found a USB drive containing writings, a kind of memoir, in which the pedophile recounted all the rapes. The nephew handed the USB drive over to the gendarmerie. In the documents found, "there is a lot of talk about sexuality with minors, and there are also photographs of teenagers. The nephew saw that reprehensible acts were described and decided to hand them over to the gendarmes," Manteaux explained.

The prosecutor also made public the name of the alleged rapist, Jacques Leveugle. "We are releasing the name because the goal is for the victims to come forward," the prosecutor stated at a press conference held this Tuesday. He also warned that it is "urgent" to find all the victims so that the investigation can move forward and the man can be brought to justice. "The suspect is 79 years old, and I want a trial to be held as soon as possible," Manteaux stated.

Victims in other countries

The French Ministry of Justice website has published photos of the detainee from his youth to the present day, detailing the years he lived in different countries. Leveugle, who is in pretrial detention, worked as an educator not only in France, but also in Germany, Switzerland, Colombia, and Morocco. "He traveled to different countries, and in each of these places where he settled to provide academic support or work as a teacher, he met young people and had sexual relations with them," the prosecutor explained. Some of the rapes have already passed the statute of limitations, but the prosecutor has asked potential victims to come forward anyway. Investigators believe that two-thirds of the victims are French, while the other third are foreign nationals. Two murders

During police interrogations, the detainee confessed to two other crimes, which he had also recorded in his written accounts: the murder of his mother, who was suffering from terminal cancer, in the 1970s, and the murder of his aunt in the 1990s, when she was 92 years old. He claimed to have suffocated both women with a pillow, according to the accused's account. The prosecutor explained that he killed his aunt because he had to leave the town where they lived and she had begged him not to go. "So he decided to kill her. Taking advantage of the fact that she was asleep, he took a pillow and suffocated her."

The prosecutor explained that they had taken so long to make the case public because initially the accused's account seemed "a bit unusual" and they needed to verify the veracity of the events. The detainee admitted to all the crimes, both the sexual assaults and the murders.