A surge of abuse accusations has led Parisian authorities to acknowledge a “collective failure” to prevent sexual offenders from working in schools.
When a young father watched a television documentary in January that focused on sexual abuse and misconduct in Parisian public schools, he was stunned to find that it concentrated on the preschool that his 3-year-old daughter attended.
Alarmed, he reminded his daughter that no adult had the right to touch her inappropriately.
She replied, in the halting language of a child, that a preschool employee had raped her with his finger in a school bathroom, the father said in an interview.
The father, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his daughter’s identity, filed a complaint with the police that The New York Times has reviewed. Louis Cailliez, the father’s lawyer, confirmed the central parts of the father’s account.
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City prosecutors began investigating, leading to the arrest of 16 current and former school employees, including the lunchtime supervisor who is under investigation on suspicion of “sexual offenses.”
Then it emerged that the lunchtime supervisor, after leaving St.-Dominique, had simply been transferred by the authorities to another school in Paris, where parents also accused him of sexual abuse, according to Mr. Cailliez, the lawyer, who also represents parents involved in this case.
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