French PM François Bayrou failed to act on abuse at Catholic boarding school, report says
The damning report issued by French lawmakers on Wednesday comes after a long parliamentary inquiry into allegations of decades of physical abuse, rape and sexual assault at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram boarding school near Pau in south-west France.
The lawmakers also heard from survivors' groups from many other schools across France, describing how children had been subjected to 'monstrous [and] terrible crimes' of 'unprecedented severity and of absolute sadism.'
The report found what it called 'persistent' violence in public and private schools across France and accused the state of failing to act.
Bayrou, 74, has in recent months faced accusations from opposition lawmakers in parliament that as education minister he knew of physical and sexual abuse at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school, to which he sent some of his children and where his wife taught catechism. He has denied any wrongdoing, saying he only found out about the allegations of abuse from the media.
The two co-rapporteurs of the parliamentary inquiry, the centrist MP Violette Spillebout and the leftwing MP Paul Vannier, said he had not acted to address the issue of violence at Bétharram when he was education minister in the 1990s.
The report said: 'In the absence of action that the former education minister … had the means to take, this physical and sexual violence against the pupils of Bétharram continued for years.'
Vannier told a parliament press conference on Wednesday that there had been major 'failings' by the French state, the justice system and the education ministry, which failed to implement proper checks and controls. He said these failings were at every level 'from the local level right up to the highest levels of state'.
Vannier said the report found that Bayrou would have known about physical violence at the Bétharram school from 1995 and sexual violence from 1998. Vannier said: 'At the time he had all the means to act and he didn't act.'
Vannier told the state broadcaster France Inter: 'Many of the testimonies we received were beyond my imagination. I couldn't imagine acts of torture, children being injected with water, children being deprived of sleep, children being deprived of food to punish them in endless sadistic games for years and years, devastating entire lives.'
A member of Bayrou's team rejected the findings accusing the prime minister of inaction. 'It's exactly the opposite,' the official told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity. 'No minister after François Bayrou organised any verification checks or inspections.'
Bayrou, a centrist who was appointed prime minister by the president, Emmanuel Macron, in December, has denounced what he calls a political campaign of 'destruction' against him.
In mid-May, Bayrou was questioned for five and a half hours by the parliamentary inquiry, in one of the most delicate moments of his time in office. He struck a defiant tone at the time, telling the hearing: 'I had nothing to hide.'
The report found the violence at Bétharram school was systemic. The violence 'was – at least in part – institutionalised', with 'a community of prominent figures providing unwavering support', the lawmakers found.
They stressed that the abuse at Bétharram was 'far from being a unique case'.
Such violence still persisted in private schools, particularly Catholic establishments, the authors said, pointing to a 'strong code of silence'.
The report warned of 'virtually nonexistent' checks and an inadequate system of prevention and reporting by the state. They called for a compensation fund for victims and an end to all time limits on filing a legal complaint for child sexual abuse.
Alain Esquerre, a former Bétharram pupil who exposed abuse at the school and brought together survivors to fight for justice, said it was urgent that all victims of school abuse got state recognition and parliament must pass a law removing a time limit for legal complaints over child sexual abuse.
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