“Faced with the inertia of public authorities, it seemed necessary to us to act,” said Tuesday at a press conference, Paul Cassia, president of Anticor, an association approved by the High Authority for the transparency of life (HATVP), against corruption and for ethics in politics. The latter filed a complaint on Friday in Paris for “scams” and “embezzlement of public funds” targeting the private crèche group People & Baby.
“The starting point of this affair is the book by Victor Castanet on the management of a company which manages private crèches,” he continued. In his investigative book The Ogres, released in mid-September by Flammarion, this investigative journalist described the “voracity” of certain private nursery groups and in particular the People & Baby group.
People & Baby scandal involves 'issues of child abuse'
“The public authorities have remained silent about the scandal that Victor Castanet reveals. However, this scandal concerns questions of child abuse, but also questions relating to labor law,” according to Paul Cassia. “Victor Castanet's book documents numerous potential infractions, some relating to probity [détournement de fonds publics] but also relating to fraud or abuse of social good,” he underlines.
The association's lawyer, Maître Vincent Brengarth, then detailed the different qualifications covered by the complaint filed Friday before the Paris prosecutor against People & Baby, mentioning other potential offenses such as that of concealed work.
“Despite the seriousness of the behavior revealed by Victor Castanet, at this stage there has still been no self-referral to the courts or an initiative investigation despite all the malpractices revealed. This questions us to the highest degree,” insisted the lawyer, asking for an investigation.
27% of nursery places are in private institutes like People & Baby
Currently, France has 460,000 collective childcare places, of which 50% are in public crèches, 27% in private crèches (Les Petits Chaperons Rouges, Babilou, La Maison Bleue, People & Baby, etc.) and 23%. associative crèches.
Alongside “high quality, supported by in-depth educational thinking”, we also find “establishments of very degraded quality”, noted the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) in a report published after the death of a 11 month old baby in a private nursery in Lyon in 2022.
In a press release dating from mid-September, People & Baby – whose founder and president Christophe Durieux was ousted from his post in the spring – indicated that “the practices described in the work” by Victor Castanet “are completely out of step with the values that we carry today.
