The Paris city council on Tuesday adopted a €20 million action plan to tackle sexual abuse during after-school activities after several scandals. Hailed by child welfare groups and parents, the plan includes simplifying the chain of reporting, redesigning “sensitive” spaces in schools and providing special training for activity leaders.
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Newly elected Socialist mayor Emmanuel Grégoire said the issue was the “absolute priority” for his first term in office, following a series of cases of sexual abuse of minors.
“Every instance of violence against a child will result in the immediate suspension of the agent concerned, and these agents involved will not be able to work with children again in the city of Paris,” Grégoire warned, promising “total transparency [for] families”.
According to the plan, sensitive areas in schools, such as toilet facilities, will be redesigned to prevent adults from being alone with children.
The council intends to invest heavily in training, opening a “school for after-school activities”. The plan also includes establishing a hotline for parents.
Child abuse became a key topic during the Paris electoral campaign, and critics accused Grégoire of having done nothing to tackle the issue while he served on the city council between 2014 and 2024.
In his defence, he said that he had no longer had a role at city hall since he left to become an MP.
Grégoire recently revealed he was a victim of sexual abuse while in primary school, aged around nine or 10.
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Call for CCTV
The main opposition group on the council, led by right-wing Republican Rachida Dati and Grégory Canal, proposed trialling CCTV cameras inside the capital’s more than 620 schools, at what they said would be a cost of “less than €10 million”.
However, this measure was criticised by unions.
“If this were to be implemented, it would require 50 or 100 cameras per school to cover all angles and hidden corners,” Nicolas Léger, secretary-general of the Supap-FSU public service union, told news channel Franceinfo. “To claim that this will prevent acts of violence makes no sense.”
Unions are instead demanding the creation of hundreds of permanent positions, as the Parisian childcare sector currently relies heavily on temporary staff. They are also calling for a reduction in staff-to-child ratios, the recruitment of trained staff for nappy changes in preschools, and better support for children with special needs.
SOS Périscolaire, a collective of parents and advocates founded five years ago to combat violence against children during extracurricular activities, welcomed Grégoire’s plan when it was first proposed on 3 April.
Co-founder Elisabeth Guthmann told Franceinfo: “It’s a step in the right direction. This addresses everything we’ve been asking for since 2021. The reporting system was dysfunctional. We can only rejoice at the announcement of a reporting channel with a dedicated phone number.”
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Wider background checks
France’s High Commissioner for Children, Sarah El Haïry, is advocating for systematic criminal record checks for all individuals working with children, across all sectors.
Interviewed on France 2 television last week about the after-school scandal in Paris, she urged people to “believe the children, believe the parents, and hold accountable those who knew and were alerted”.
She called for the streamlining of background checks, which she hopes will be included in a draft law on child protection being prepared by the Minister for Families, Stéphanie Rist, and the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin.
The bill, due to be presented in mid-May, would standardise background checks on adults involved in supervising children and make it easier for the information to be shared when relevant, in order to prevent people with criminal convictions seeking another job with children in a different sector, for example.
Since France made it mandatory last October for everyone working or volunteering with young children or in child protection to provide a certificate attesting that they do not have a criminal conviction, nearly 3,000 people have been excluded from these sectors, El Haïry said.
“Today, within child welfare or early childhood services, the canteen worker or the cleaning lady is more thoroughly vetted than the choir director in a local music school,” she commented.
