A 31-year-old English teacher now sits in a French jail, accused of raping and sexually abusing toddlers as young as three inside a Catholic nursery school in Paris.
Quick Take
- Yasser G., an Algerian national, was formally charged and jailed on September 24, 2026, over rape, sexual assault, and violence against 22 children ages 3 to 5.
- Roughly 20 formal complaints were filed against him from a private Catholic nursery school in Paris’s 10th district.
- His lawyer says he does not recognize the facts alleged against him.
- The case joins a much larger French scandal involving alleged abuse at more than 100 schools and nurseries.
What Prosecutors Say Happened at the Nursery
Yasser G. worked as an outside English instructor at the Saint-Laurent nursery school, hired through a company called CapEnglish. Prosecutors say he held that job from September 2025 until June 23, 2026, when he was suspended. He worked alone with groups of very young children, ages three to five, according to the reporting.
A French court placed him under formal judicial investigation, the equivalent of being charged, and ordered him jailed pending trial. The charges include rape, sexual assault, and violence without lasting injury, all allegedly committed against 22 children at the school. That number reflects how many separate young victims investigators believe were harmed, not a single incident.
How the Complaints Piled Up So Fast
The case became public after families began filing complaints with police. Reports say close to 20 complaints named the same man, all tied to the same small Catholic nursery in northern Paris. Investigators first took him into custody for questioning on September 22, 2026. Two days later, prosecutors moved to formally charge and jail him, a sign they believed the evidence was strong enough to justify detention ahead of trial.
CapEnglish, the company that employed him, said it acted the moment school leaders told them about the allegations. The company said it immediately barred him from any further contact with pupils as a precaution. It also said the background checks required before he ever worked with children had already been completed at the time he was hired.
A Much Bigger Crisis Than One Classroom
This arrest lands inside a scandal that has rocked France’s school system for more than a year. Paris prosecutors have said investigators are examining more than 200 allegations of abuse, violence, and mistreatment of young children at city-run nurseries and primary schools, some dating back over a decade. Officials have described the pattern as touching roughly 84 preschools, about 20 primary schools, and several daycare centers across the city.
Paris’s former mayor publicly called it a “collective failure” of the institutions meant to protect children. The city’s chief prosecutor has gone further, opening a separate investigation into the former mayor and the current mayor over whether officials failed to act fast enough once warning signs appeared. Parents’ groups say families waited months between filing a complaint and seeing any real response from child-protection authorities.
What the Accused Says in His Own Defense
The man’s attorney told reporters his client does not accept the accusations against him. That denial is the only detailed response from his side made public so far, and French law treats the charges as allegations until a court rules otherwise. Separately, in an unrelated earlier trial tied to the broader scandal, another defendant admitted breaking basic safety guidelines, like letting a child sit on his lap, while still denying any sexual abuse.
A private Catholic nursery in the 10th district of Paris left an outside English teacher alone with groups of three- to five-year-olds. One child spoke in May. Classes went on. By late September a judge had charged the man and sent him to jail while the case is built. Twenty-two…
— Planet Today (@PlanetTodayNews) September 25, 2026
For parents, the details matter less than the pattern they reveal. A private Catholic school, a foreign national with unsupervised access to toddlers, and a background-check process that a company insists was followed by the book. That combination should worry any parent, regardless of politics, and it raises hard questions about how thoroughly schools vet adults left alone with children too young to describe what happened to them.
Sources:
lenouveaudetective.com, nytimes.com, lefigaro.fr, euronews.com, dw.com
