Pedophile father accused of raping 34 children and filming the crimes in France

Children walk around in the city of Lucenay, in France Olivier Chassignole/AFP A case of major child sexual abuse has caused commotion and shock in France. A man, aged around 40, accused of raping and sexually abusing at least 34 children in the Rhône-Alpes region, in the southeast of the country, is in pre-trial detention. ✅ Follow the g1 international news channel on WhatsApp He had already been indicted in 2025 for raping boys and was charged again in April, after the discovery of new crimes, the Villefranche-sur-Saône Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed on Wednesday (29), as revealed by the newspaper Le Monde. The victims are exclusively boys, aged between 2 and 9 years old at the time of the crimes, which took place between 2020 and 2024, in the city of Lucenay, in the heart of the Beaujolais wine region, around 30 kilometers north of Lyon. The abuse allegedly occurred mainly during birthday parties and sleepovers organized at the suspect’s home, according to Le Monde. The accused, father of two children, was already known to the courts. In January 2025, he was formally charged with child rape in the same region. Arrested the following month, he remained in judicial custody. The identification of new victims led, in April, to a new indictment, this time for rape and sexual abuse of minors under the age of 15, as well as possession and production of pornographic material involving children, prosecutor Laetitia Francart told AFP. Crimes Trending videos on g1 The investigation revealed a systematic way of acting. The suspect recorded the abuse on video and photography — in some cases while the children were awake, in others while they were sleeping. 127 videos and 197 photos of criminal content were found. The recordings were made with the accused’s own cell phone or through a small camera hidden in an alarm clock. The victims were filmed naked, some of them sexually assaulted, especially in the shower. Others were allegedly raped at night while they slept, in a state of unconsciousness, which led family members to question the possible use of chemical coercion. To date, 34 victims have been formally identified. According to the prosecutor’s office, not all of them suffered the same types of violence. The children attended the same school as the accused’s children, from kindergarten to the first years of elementary school — a factor that deepened the shock and indignation in French society. Given the seriousness of the case, a listening and psychological support unit was installed at the school in March 2025. All families were contacted, and, according to the prosecutor’s office, a meeting with parents will be organized in the coming weeks. Recurrence The case became public at the end of 2024, when some victims began reporting the abuse to their parents. Three families filed a complaint, which led to the suspect’s arrest in December of that year. After his arrest, he was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital, according to the prosecutor’s office. Upon returning home, the accused wrote a letter to his family expressing suicidal intentions. He even tried to take his own life, but was found by the police. During interrogations, he confessed to most of the charges, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. “I think I was born this way, I didn’t choose to love boys… Boys who were very young. I hated myself for that, but I didn’t have the strength to talk about it,” the accused wrote in a letter cited by the newspaper Le Monde. Preventive detention was maintained, and the judicial investigation is ongoing to clarify precisely the circumstances of the crimes. The case, widely covered by the French press, caused a profound shock in public opinion and reignited debates about the protection of children, failures to identify abuse early and surveillance in environments considered safe. Authorities and experts classify the episode as one of the most disturbing in recent years in France, both due to the number of victims and the trusting context in which the crimes occurred — within the family and in the school environment. VIDEOS: most watched on g1

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