An after-school facilitator from Lampertheim (Bas-Rhin) was indicted on Thursday March 3 for touching several children in his care, said the Strasbourg prosecutor's office.
Read alsoViolence between children, pedocrime: the concern of magistrates for minors
This 44-year-old man, married and father, was indicted for "
sexual assault on a 15-year-old minor
" and, in the case of an alleged victim, for "
corruption of a 15-year-old minor
“, we clarified.
A total of eight alleged victims, the oldest of whom was 12, have been identified: seven girls and a boy, according to the same source.
The prosecution was to request his placement in pre-trial detention during the debate before the judge of freedoms and detention on Thursday evening, it was added.
The alleged victims attended an after-school center in Lampertheim, a town of just under 3,000 inhabitants located about fifteen kilometers north of Strasbourg.
The suspect had worked for twenty years in this center, where he could have been in contact with some 2,000 children.
"Impulsions" that he "does not explain"
It is a young woman, now in her twenties, who filed a first complaint last year, initially dismissed.
But others then followed, it was added.
The forty-year-old was, however, the subject since the first complaint of an administrative suspension, according to the prosecution, at the same time the recipient of a report from the national education system.
During his police custody, he partially acknowledged the facts, indicating that he had suffered for ten years
from "urges
" that he "
does not explain
", according to the prosecution, which retained 2010 as the start of the alleged touching.
The man also said he downloaded child pornography to his computer.
Investigators seized around sixty hard drives from his home, two of which, according to the host, contain child pornography content, it was said.
The investigation was entrusted to the gendarmerie of Mundolsheim (Bas-Rhin) which set up two telephone lines (06.71.17.86.19/06.71.01.65.68) in order to collect the testimonies of other potential victims.