Nursery school is mandatory in France from the age of three, and school monitors are a key daily presence for children aged from three to 11.

Accusations against school monitors reported by parents across France include children being screamed at, pushed, having their hair pulled, being denied food, forced to eat until they vomited and being sexually assaulted or raped.

Lawyer Louis Cailliez, who represents two Paris families, filed police complaints in February over the alleged rapes of their nursery schoolchildren in 2025. In one case, a three-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a school monitor at a school in the west of Paris. In another instance, a three-year-old boy was allegedly raped by the same monitor who had been moved to a different school after complaints he had been physically violent towards children.

Cailliez 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.”