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.
Another father spoke of “stress” and “anxiety” and said it was horrifying that someone could allegedly operate on what he called an “industrial” scale. A mother who attended a school meeting said parents became angry when officials continued describing the information as uncertain, arguing that a child of that age does not simply invent such allegations.
Lawyers representing several families are now examining whether institutional negligence compounded the alleged criminal conduct. Attorney Antonin Gravelin-Rodriguez said the affair had not been handled internally as it should have been and pledged scrutiny of institutional failures and responsibility.
The fact that the alleged abuse occurred inside a Catholic nursery school has sharpened the sense of betrayal among families who expected unusually strong supervision and a clear duty to protect vulnerable children. The Diocese of Paris had not responded to the press inquiries cited in the material provided, while school management initially declined further comment.
The suspect’s Algerian nationality has inevitably pushed the affair into France’s bitter argument over mass immigration, assimilation and the standards applied to people entrusted with children. That nationality is a documented fact in this case, but the available reporting does not establish his immigration route, length of residence, citizenship history or whether immigration authorities ever had grounds to exclude or remove him.
France does have a broader and worsening problem with recorded sexual violence against minors. Interior Ministry data show 132,300 victims of recorded sexual violence in 2025, including 76,200 minors, while the overall number of recorded sexual-violence victims rose 8% from the previous year.
🇫🇷11 staff members are accused of sexual assaults and rapes at the Saint-Dominique nursery school, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France.
“Look at that school behind us, that’s the school where my 3-year-old daughter was raped by several after-school care staff members,”… pic.twitter.com/unvnP8SUjM
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) March 27, 2026
The Interior Ministry’s 2025 crime assessment specifically notes disproportionate involvement of foreign nationals in some property offenses, but its published summary does not support converting this individual nursery-school case into a general claim that foreigners as a group are responsible for sexual violence against French children.
The National Rally has nevertheless made drastically tighter immigration enforcement a central part of its political program. In March 2026 the party celebrated tougher European return rules as a major step against illegal immigration, arguing that European governments had tolerated migration policies for years that RN says weakened national control over who enters and remains on the continent.
Marine Le Pen has for years connected her immigration agenda with security, assimilation and the protection of women and families, calling for sharply reduced immigration, stronger national borders and the expulsion of foreign offenders. Those are longstanding RN political arguments rather than conclusions established by the Saint-Laurent investigation, but cases involving foreign suspects predictably intensify the debate the party has built much of its identity around.
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