The recently elected Socialist Party Mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, is already besieged by scandal as hundreds of families have urged his office to inflict punishment against those involved in the mass sexual abuse of children in public after-school programmes.
Grégoire, who served as deputy under previous Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, managed to win the race against centre-right Républicains candidate Rachida Dati this month, despite having served in the administration which oversaw one of the biggest scandals to emerge in modern French history.
In December, it was reported that at least 52 leaders of city after-school programmes in Paris had been suspended over allegations of sexually abusing children over the previous three years.
It came after three leaders of the Bullourde school were suspended in October on suspicion of “acts of sexual assault” against children. This allegedly included assaults against a three-year-old girl, who mimed the sexual acts apparently done to her to investigators, who determined that such acts would have been outside the realm of such a young child’s imagination. This followed similar reports from a separate school in April earlier that year.
The breadth of the scandal appears to be widening, with three more men being arrested this month for allegedly sexually abusing children between the ages of three and nine years old in three schools in Paris.
On Sunday, the parents of 777 students in the 7th and 15th arrondissements of Paris delivered a letter to Mayor Grégoire, demanding an independent audit of the sexual assaults against children in after-school programmes in the capital. They also demanded that the new mayor impose sanctions on certain officials in the city government over failures to safeguard children, Franceinfo reported.
The parents said that there must be a “clear commitment” made from the new administration to establish and punish those responsible “at each level of the decision-making chain” in Town Hall.
They further demanded that the mayor ensure that those accused of sexual violence against children in Parisian schools are not merely transferred to other schools, as has been alleged in some cases, but rather face criminal punishment.
For his part, Mayor Grégoire said on Monday that combating the sexual abuse of children will be the “absolute priority” of his incoming administration. He also claimed that none of the school staff was transferred after facing accusations, and that they have all been suspended amid investigations.
The Socialist mayor said that he was also interested in hiring an independent firm to carry out an audit of the accusations and to help “monitor the correct application of procedures over time”.
“We have to start everything from the beginning. We need to turn the tables. We must identify those who are guilty. We must protect our children,” he said, while vowing “zero tolerance” and a review of “all recruitment procedures”.
However, there remains deep scepticism of the mayor, particularly given that he served as second in command in the administration which failed to protect the children in the first place.
One of the parents who helped organise the letter on Sunday said: “When he won the election, he didn’t have a word for the children. I don’t believe for a single second that he handles the subject properly.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
Read the full article here