Staff at 100 schools probed after ‘children as young as three raped during nap times’

Dozens of state nursery and primary schools are under investigation over vile allegations of violence, sexual assault, and rape against the smallest of children.

More than 100 nursery primary schools are being probed in a giant safeguarding scandal which claims tots as young as three were raped at nap times.

Dozens of state nursery and primary schools are under investigation over vile allegations of violence, sexual assault, and rape against the smallest of children. French police are looking into more than 100 separate allegations of physical abuse and rape of children.

Authorities in the country said the scale of the investigation is unprecedented and they believe the abuse took place during lunch breaks, nap times and after-school care with probes including the alleged rape of children as young as three and four.

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said: “We have investigations underway in 84 preschools, about 20 primary schools and about 10 daycare centres.”

Florian Lastelle, a lawyer for three Paris families who have filed police complaints over the alleged abuse of their children added: “It’s a massive scandal.

“The state school system is a source of pride in this country, but unfortunately in France today it’s not possible to say that the public service guarantees children’s safety.”

The allegations centre on places named in France as school monitors – adults responsible for supervising children during lunch, break times, naps and after-school activities.

These job roles are not directly employed by schools or the education ministry, instead through local authorities often without formal qualifications.

In France, nursery school attendance is compulsory from age three, meaning school monitors are a daily presence in the lives of children aged roughly three to 11.

Parent campaigning groups have long been critics of the system, reporting a wide range of alleged abuse including children being screamed at, forced to eat until they vomited, and, in the most serious cases, sexually assaulted or raped.

They have been holding protests about the state of the system.

Lawyer Louis Cailliez, who represents two Paris families, filed police complaints in February over alleged rapes of nursery schoolchildren in 2025.

In one case, a three-year-old girl is alleged to have been raped by a school monitor at a school in western Paris.

In another case, a three-year-old boy is alleged to have been raped by the same monitor, who had reportedly been transferred to another school after earlier complaints of physical violence.

Mr Cailliez called the cases a “national catastrophe” and said: “One morning, the three-year-old boy became so distressed in front of the school gates, refusing to go in, that he fell into a kind of trance and his mother was in tears.

“The headteacher had to come out to force the child into school, and at the time neither the boy’s mother nor the headteacher knew why.

“It is daily torture for the parents who want the investigation to move forward to establish the scale of the offences.”

The case is expected to intensify further as proceedings begin in Paris next week, where a school monitor is due to stand trial accused of sexually abusing five children aged between three and five at a nursery school in the capital.

A separate verdict is also expected next month in another case involving a 47-year-old school monitor accused of sexually abusing nine 10-year-old girls in the French capital.