A paedophile teacher who was jailed for abusing pupils in the UK allegedly began preying on a 14-year-old boy again after finding work at a top international school in France on his release.
Julian Bertrand, 37, from Paris, was found guilty in 2006 of sexual offences against two students aged 14 and 16 at schools in Essex and Somerset between 2000 and 2005.
He was jailed for six years, forced to sign the UK sex offenders register, and barred from working with children.
The court heard Bertrand told the boys he would kill himself if they did not satisfy his ‘ultimate desire’ and in one instance pretended to load a gun to force a student to have sex with him.
Julian Bertrand was able to set up a school in Paris after being jailed for child sex offences in the UK
He also gave one of the pupils gifts worth up to £5,000.
But after leaving prison in 2011, he moved to France and found work as a music teacher at the exclusive Victor Hugo School in Paris where he reportedly began grooming one of his pupils again.
According to The Sunday Times, Bertrand sent explicit texts to the youngster in which he told him that he loved him.
The £21,000-a-year school dismissed the teacher in 2013 after the boy’s father complained.
Despite this, Bertrand was able to work with children again a year later after jointly setting up another international private school, called Kingsworth International, also in Paris, where he became deputy head.
The school’s head teacher told The Sunday Times that the paedophile had ‘lied about his past’.
Once his criminal record was discovered Kingsworth sent out a letter to the parents of its pupils and dismissed Bertrand, who left the institution last month.
The president of Victor Hugo, Bernard DeleSelle, also accused the teacher of having ‘tricked’ them in order to get a job, but added that legal complications prevented the school from blowing the whistle on the paedophile’s past.
He said: ‘Because he created his own structure in direct competition to our establishment, we could not have publicly denigrated him without risking legal action.’
The head of the school in Somerset where Bertrand had abused one of his victims said: ‘I find it extraordinary that the systems for safeguarding children do not appear to be joined up in a better way. It is very worrying indeed.’
A spokesman for France’s education ministry admitted that there was a current issue with identifying teachers with past sex crimes.
The government department added: ‘A new law was put forward in 2016 to allow better communication between the justice and education departments, but it has not happened yet.’
According to the Times, Bertrand, who is also a shareholder at Kingsworth, is still free to teach elsewhere in France.