A 31-year-old Algerian national has been indicted and jailed pending trial over allegations of rape, sexual assault and violence against 22 children at a private Catholic nursery school in Paris.
According to reports from the French and wider pan-European press, accusations involve boys and girls born between 2020 and 2022, some barely old enough to explain clearly what had allegedly happened to them.
The suspect, identified in French reports as Yasser G., worked for Cap English and delivered introductory English lessons at École Saint-Laurent in Paris’s 10th arrondissement. He taught small groups during roughly 30-minute sessions and was reportedly left alone with the children without their regular classroom teacher present.
Paris prosecutors say the 22 children interviewed described alleged shouting, insults, blows, intimate touching and acts of sexual penetration. Those claims remain allegations to be tested by an investigating judge, but their scale has transformed what began with one family’s complaint into a major child-protection case.
The alarm began with the parents of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl who said their daughter described the instructor as “mean” and told them he had touched her intimate parts. Her family alerted the school through its École Directe system on May 11, weeks before police received the formal complaint.
What happened next has left parents furious. Families say management initially treated the information as “mixed” and questioned groups of children itself rather than immediately removing the instructor and leaving interviews to specialists trained to handle possible sexual abuse.
The instructor continued having access to pupils after that first warning. On May 22, the school director even contacted parents about expanding Cap English lessons to Wednesdays, and the children subsequently spent about three additional hours with him before the academic year ended.
The first family finally filed its formal complaint on June 22 and informed Saint-Laurent the next day. Cap English then suspended the instructor, while the school notified prosecutors and later announced psychological assistance for affected families.
Cap English insists it acted as soon as the school formally notified the company. It also says the legally required checks carried out when the instructor was recruited revealed nothing that prevented him from working with children.
Yet the case raises an uncomfortable question about what those safeguards actually accomplish when an outside contractor can repeatedly enter a nursery classroom and be left alone with children as young as three. A screening system that satisfies paperwork requirements but fails to prevent abuse, if the allegations are proved, offers little consolation to families afterward.
Investigators did not arrest the instructor during the summer while specialists undertook the lengthy process of interviewing young children. Reports say that before his eventual arrest, he had already obtained another job at a management school for the new academic year.
Police detained him on September 22, and he appeared before a judge two days later. Prosecutors secured his placement in pre-trial detention while an examining magistrate now oversees the investigation.
Parents have directed some of their fiercest criticism at Saint-Laurent’s leadership. One mother said families had initially been asked to remain silent so as not to interfere with investigators, but described management’s communication as “catastrophic from the start” and said the affair had to become public.