GENEVA — A United Nations official who investigated allegations that French peacekeepers had sexually abused children in the Central African Republic says she informed the French military authorities within a month of having started her inquiry, giving a possible new twist to a long-running scandal that led to the intervention of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The official, Gallianne Palayret, a human rights investigator who led the first inquiries into suspected abuse, said in a Skype interview that she had informed the French peacekeepers’ commanding officer and the unit’s legal affairs officer about the allegations in May 2014. This was the same month that she started interviewing children who might have been victimized and two months before the French authorities have said they first heard about the matter.

Ms. Palayret first went public with her assertions Oct. 1 in the French news media. There has been no response so far from France’s Defense Ministry, and her account has not been publicly corroborated by others directly involved.

Nonetheless, Ms. Palayret’s assertions, if accurate, would shed new light on a scandal that is the subject of investigations by two United Nations panels and by the French government, and they would raise fresh questions about when the French authorities first learned of the abuse and what action they took.