A respected French teacher who offered free language lessons and gave cash to people in working-class neighborhoods has been jailed on suspicion of ab*sing 89 boys over more than five decades.
Jacques Leveugle, known as Monsieur Jacques, was detained in his home country, prosecutors in France announced last week.
Under questioning, the 79-year-old also admitted to taking the lives of his mother and aunt when they were terminally ill with cancer by suffocating them with pillows.
Highlights
- French authorities announced that an elderly French teacher was arrested in 2024 and is under investigation for crimes involving 89 minors.
- Jacques Leveugle provided free French lessons around the world and gave money to people in low-income neighborhoods.
- Leveugle, described as a “very good teacher,” allegedly detailed the encounters with the minors on a USB drive.
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Trigger warning: This article discusses crime involving minors. Reader discretion is advised.
Leveugle was born in Annecy, France, and moved to Morocco in 1955, where his father worked at the French Embassy.
In the early 2000s, he moved to the city of Khenifra, settling in the working-class Lassiri neighborhood. Residents said he frequently spent time with teenage boys aged 13 to 15.
There, he worked as a private tutor and, according to neighbors, offered free lessons, organized school outings, funded local projects, and even provided financial assistance to families.
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Leveugle reportedly bought houses and vehicles for those in need and helped them immigrate to Europe.
French investigators identified 89 victims of Leveugle, boys aged 13 to 17, after examining a USB drive that his nephew turned over to police in 2023. Suspicious of his uncle, the nephew took advantage of Leveugle’s absence while he traveled to France to visit a family member and analyzed the contents of the USB.
Leveugle was arrested the following year, in 2024. The USB files detailed his "s*xual relations" with the minors and included photographs and written accounts, said Grenoble prosecutor, Etienne Manteaux.
Jacques Leveugle offered free French lessons around the world and targeted boys aged 13 to 17
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His crimes reportedly took place between 1967 and 2022.
Leveugle also lived in northern Algeria, where he taught French at three schools. French authorities believe there may be additional victims and have issued an international appeal showing pictures of the former teacher at different ages.
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Ali Bouchemla, one of Leveugle’s students in Algeria in the 1960s, described him as “devoted and a very good teacher,” adding that he was “stunned” when he heard the news of his imprisonment.
Najat Anwar, president of the Moroccan child protection organization Don’t Touch my Child, said perpetrators are often known to the child and present themselves through educational or cultural activities.
They “cultivate a respectable image and leverage social or cultural prestige to gain trust,” Anwar explained. “They then target children in vulnerable emotional or social situations.”
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According to RAINN, the largest anti-s*xual violence organization in the United States, most perpetrators are acquaintances (59%) or family members (34%), and only 7% are strangers to the victim.
Manteaux said the former teacher also worked in Germany, Switzerland, Niger, the Philippines, India, Colombia, and the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.
"He traveled to these different countries and in each of these places where he settled to provide tutoring and teach, he would meet young people and have s*xual relations with them,” he stated during a press conference on Tuesday (February 10).
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The Associated Press spoke with a dozen people who directly knew Leveugle in Morocco and Algeria. They all described him as discreet, helpful, and a man who loved to spend time with children.
Now, many in Morocco’s Lassiri neighborhood are considering moving out.
Leveugle is suspected of ab*sing more than a dozen boys in Morocco, where he lived until his arrest in 2024, and at least two more in Algeria, where he worked as a French teacher for eight years in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Residents recalled that the 79-year-old once took children to a regional lake and told them to remove their clothes after taking off his own, under the pretense that it was healthier to swim that way.
The suspect, who speaks fluent Arabic and Moroccan dialect, reportedly held Moroccan residency and had no known criminal complaints filed against him in the kingdom.
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About 90 million children alive today have experienced s*xual violence, according to UNICEF.
“Many victims and survivors never disclose and/or seek justice, rehabilitation, or support because of the shame,” the United Nations notes.
“For many victims and survivors, their child ab*se experience affects their physical and mental health and well-being, and sometimes there are lifelong consequences.”
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In his USB “memoirs," Leveugle had written that he had “k*lled two people,” later identified as his mother and aunt.
The suspect “justifies his actions by saying that he would like someone to do the same for him if he found himself in this end-of-life situation”, the prosecutor said.
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