Another Pre-kindergarten teacher has been suspended in France as part of an emerging after-school clubs sex abuse crisis which may turn out to be one of the largest scandals in modern French history.
A male pre-school support worker has been suspended by the local government in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loir, a suburb of Nantes in the Loire as a “precautionary measure”, after allegations of sex abuse of a five-year-old girl emerged in the city this week. In a press release that French broadsheet Le Figaro reports was entitled simply “Sexual Violence”, the city stated it had moved quickly to implement their procedures upon receipt of the allegation.
They said the report regarded “reprehensible behaviour of a staff member towards children”. Per the report, no arrests have yet been made.
In France, ‘Pre-K’ or nursery school is mandatory from age three.
The suspension is part of a rapidly unfolding national scandal that emerged from revelations of widespread child sex abuse in after-school programmes in national capital Paris. It has since been stated to have impacted other cities nationwide and has triggered protests on sexual violence against children.
As previously reported the scandal has become an early headache for the refreshed socialist government of the city of Paris, with the new left-wing mayor receiving demands from hundreds of families to act faster.
Last year, it was revealed 52 employees of Paris’s after-school clubs programme had been suspended over allegations of child sex assault in just three years, and in one case three adult employees were suspended from just one school, allegedly over attacks on a three-year-old girl. The number later rose to 132.
Elisabeth Guthmann, the founder of SOS-Périscolaire, a whistleblowing group against rape in preschools, said there had been over 500 reports of alleged abuse nationwide so far. The group and others have called on the government to improve transparency over who are hired to after school programmes.
Earlier this year it was stated Paris Police are investigating over 100 cases of “physical violence and rape” of very young children “during lunch breaks, nap times and after-school activities”. The Guardian states that in one case a member of staff was reported for abuse at one school and was simply moved on to another school where he allegedly raped a child.
Some cases have now reached court. The first such cases saw a junior school worker acquitted of all charges after being accused of ‘sexual assault’ of three young girls. Le Monde reports that while the court ruled the man “established an excessively affectionate relationship” with three 10-year-old girls, he did not break the law and claims of assault were “insufficiently substantiated”.
The paper states the mother of one of the children in the case spoke out after the ruling, calling the court “culpably lenient” and cowardly.