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France 24
2 days ago
- Politics
- France 24
Children ‘subjected to monstrosities': Report exposes decades of abuse in French schools
French lawmakers on Wednesday accused the state of "structural dysfunctions" in handling child abuse in schools, delivering a scathing 330-page report that chronicles decades of systemic violence and silence across France's educational institutions. 'Children across France were subjected to monstrosities,' wrote the committee president, Fatiha Keloua Hachi, describing the three-month investigation as a 'deep dive into the unthinkable'. The probe, led by centrist Violette Spillebout from Macron's ruling party Renaissance, and Paul Vannier, a lawmaker with the hard-left France Unbowed party (LFI), heard testimony from 140 people, including survivors. While abuse occurred in both public and private schools, the MPs said Catholic institutions were especially affected, citing 'stricter educational models' and a persistent 'law of silence'. In many cases, they said, it wasn't just the children who kept quiet but also school officials, clergy and civil servants who failed to act or actively covered up wrongdoing. Historian Claude Lelièvre traced this back to the culture of silence and obedience in religious teaching orders. "They viewed obedience as a cardinal virtue, both for themselves and for their students. Obedience at all costs. Obedience to someone who, in their eyes, was the lieutenant of God on earth," he said. Public schools, by contrast, embraced a different philosophy. "It wasn't about obeying a person," Lelièvre said, "but helping children consent to shared rules." The Bétharram case Much of the report focuses on the Bétharram Catholic boarding school in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region, where priests, teachers and staff are accused of having sexually and physically abused students from 1957 to 2004. According to the MPs, some 200 complaints have been filed since the beginning of the year. Victims described acts of 'unprecedented severity, of absolute sadism'. Lawmakers called Bétharram a "textbook example" of the state's failure to prevent and monitor abuse, warning that the same systemic flaws "are still in place today". Prime Minister François Bayrou, who was education minister from 1993 to 1997 and sent some of his children to the school, has faced growing criticism. The report stops short of directly implicating him, but Spillebout and Vannier wrote: "In the absence of action from a minister who was informed and in a position to intervene, the abuse of students at Bétharram continued for years." Bayrou's eldest daughter, Helene Perlant, accused the clergy running the school of systemic abuse, saying a priest beat her during summer camp when she was 14. She said however her father did not know about the incident. In a footnote, Vannier accused Bayrou of having "knowingly misled" the National Assembly in March, when he initially claimed to have learned about the scandal "at the same time as everyone else, in the press". He later admitted he had received information, but said he had not grasped the seriousness of the allegations. Lack of figures and oversight Beyond Bétharram, the report highlights the state's failure to monitor abusive staff. Regional background checks allowed sanctioned teachers to move between schools undetected. "The Ministry of Education," the report said, "is still incapable of ensuring that a sanctioned teacher cannot simply be transferred to another school." This kind of administrative evasion has been going on for decades. "For a long time now, there has been a culture of cover-up, of transferring problematic staff, of not reporting incidents when they occurred," Lelièvre said. The committee also pointed to a lack of national data on abuse. 'No consolidated public data is available on violence committed against pupils by members of staff,' the report stated, urging the government to commission new surveys. Where data does exist — notably on sexual violence — the gap between official data and victimisation surveys is stark. While national surveys estimate 7,000 pupils are affected annually, state school leaders reported only 280 incidents in 2023-2024. 'The Ministry is not really tracking these issues thoroughly,' Lelièvre said. "The figures are inconsistent, and there's a lack of proper monitoring and understanding of what's happening. We need much more robust oversight, including independent monitoring, not just relying on the institution itself." Urgent recommendations To address what they call a "systemic culture of impunity", the MPs called for tighter background checks and the creation of a national reporting platform that would allow whistleblowers to bypass traditional hierarchies. The new platform, called Signal Educ', would be accompanied by annual regional reports on abuse in schools. They also recommended that contracts between the state and private schools include binding provisions on abuse prevention and child safety, with clear sanctions for non-compliance. For boarding schools, they called for yearly unannounced inspections and confidential interviews with randomly selected students. Other proposals include the creation of a national compensation fund for victims and a legal review to potentially extend, or in some cases eliminate, statutes of limitation for sexual abuse of minors. Although the cross-party commission unanimously adopted the report, it remains to be seen whether lawmakers will act on its recommendations.
The Star
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Star
France must better regulate private Catholic schools, lawmakers say after abuse scandal
FILE PHOTO: A view shows the school Le Beau Rameau, formerly known as the Notre-Dame de Betharram institution, a French Catholic college-high school, in Lestelle-Betharram, near Pau, France, February 21, 2025. REUTERS/Alexandre Dimou/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) -France must better regulate private schools and allow prosecutions for abuse of pupils whenever it was committed, two lawmakers said in a report published on Wednesday after allegations of decades of abuse at a Catholic school. The parliamentary investigation into French schools was triggered by dozens of complaints of physical and sexual abuse by staff and religious members from former pupils of Notre-Dame de Betharram, where many pupils lived on site during term. "Aside from the women serving us food at the canteen, everyone was part of the violence," the report quotes Didier Vinson, a former pupil of Betharram, in the southwest of the country, as saying. Other former pupils and ex-students from other schools also recounted similar experiences and accounts of physical violence and sexual abuse in the report. Prime Minister François Bayrou's eldest daughter, who was a pupil in Betharram, in April described being violently hit by a now-deceased priest at the school in the 1980s. In total, some 250 complaints have been filed against at least 26 alleged perpetrators, the report said. At least 90 of the complaints concern sexual abuse by at least 15 perpetrators. Management at the school, which has been renamed Le Beau Rameau, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is not known to have commented publicly on the allegations. The allegations have taken on a political dimension, with Bayrou, a former education minister and a prominent politician in the region where the school is located, accused by opponents of lying when he said he did not know about the scandal. His daughter, Helene Perlant, said she had not told her father until the week her allegations were published in Paris Match. Bayrou has repeatedly rejected any wrongdoing, saying he had not been aware of the abuse. REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS The report's authors, Paul Vannier from the hard left France Unbowed and Violette Spillebout, from President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party, now plan to work on draft legislation that would scrap the statute of limitations for abuse against minors. Vannier said he also wants parliament to act against Bayrou, whom he accused of lying. Many of the Betharram complaints concern alleged abuse committed as far back as the 1950s. The statute of limitations is currently 30 years for rape and 10 years for sexual assault. "This report makes a damning observation, that of a major failure of the state in the control and prevention of violence in schools," Vannier told a news conference. The lawmakers wrote in their report that the situation was worse in private, Catholic schools. They cited "an explicitly stricter educational model" and a "particularly pervasive code of silence". There are about 2 million pupils in Catholic schools in France. French state-run schools are secular under France's constitutional separation of religion and state. Most of the country's private schools are Catholic. The lawmakers want the state to create a compensation fund for victims and acknowledge its responsibility for what they say were insufficient checks on what was going on within private schools, and in particular boarding schools. Among the measures they call for are regular, unannounced inspections of all schools and enhanced training for all school staff on detecting and handling abuse. They say inspections in private schools, unlike for public schools, are way too rare. Asked to comment on the report, government spokesperson Sophie Primas expressed her solidarity with the victims but did not say what new policies the government could adopt. Alain Esquerre, a whistleblower in the Betharram case and a spokesperson for the victims, welcomed the report's findings. "Over the decades, this school did anything and everything with the children," he told RTL radio on Wednesday. (Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Ingrid Melander;Editing by Alison Williams)
Straits Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
France must better regulate private Catholic schools, lawmakers say after abuse scandal
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox FILE PHOTO: A view shows the school Le Beau Rameau, formerly known as the Notre-Dame de Betharram institution, a French Catholic college-high school, in Lestelle-Betharram, near Pau, France, February 21, 2025. REUTERS/Alexandre Dimou/File Photo PARIS - France must better regulate private schools and allow prosecutions for abuse of pupils whenever it was committed, two lawmakers said in a report published on Wednesday after allegations of decades of abuse at a Catholic school. The parliamentary investigation into French schools was triggered by dozens of complaints of physical and sexual abuse by staff and religious members from former pupils of Notre-Dame de Betharram, where many pupils lived on site during term. "Aside from the women serving us food at the canteen, everyone was part of the violence," the report quotes Didier Vinson, a former pupil of Betharram, in the southwest of the country, as saying. Other former pupils and ex-students from other schools also recounted similar experiences and accounts of physical violence and sexual abuse in the report. Prime Minister François Bayrou's eldest daughter, who was a pupil in Betharram, in April described being violently hit by a now-deceased priest at the school in the 1980s. In total, some 250 complaints have been filed against at least 26 alleged perpetrators, the report said. At least 90 of the complaints concern sexual abuse by at least 15 perpetrators. Management at the school, which has been renamed Le Beau Rameau, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is not known to have commented publicly on the allegations. The allegations have taken on a political dimension, with Bayrou, a former education minister and a prominent politician in the region where the school is located, accused by opponents of lying when he said he did not know about the scandal. His daughter, Helene Perlant, said she had not told her father until the week her allegations were published in Paris Match. Bayrou has repeatedly rejected any wrongdoing, saying he had not been aware of the abuse. REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS The report's authors, Paul Vannier from the hard left France Unbowed and Violette Spillebout, from President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party, now plan to work on draft legislation that would scrap the statute of limitations for abuse against minors. Vannier said he also wants parliament to act against Bayrou, whom he accused of lying. Many of the Betharram complaints concern alleged abuse committed as far back as the 1950s. The statute of limitations is currently 30 years for rape and 10 years for sexual assault. "This report makes a damning observation, that of a major failure of the state in the control and prevention of violence in schools," Vannier told a news conference. The lawmakers wrote in their report that the situation was worse in private, Catholic schools. They cited "an explicitly stricter educational model" and a "particularly pervasive code of silence". There are about 2 million pupils in Catholic schools in France. French state-run schools are secular under France's constitutional separation of religion and state. Most of the country's private schools are Catholic. The lawmakers want the state to create a compensation fund for victims and acknowledge its responsibility for what they say were insufficient checks on what was going on within private schools, and in particular boarding schools. Among the measures they call for are regular, unannounced inspections of all schools and enhanced training for all school staff on detecting and handling abuse. They say inspections in private schools, unlike for public schools, are way too rare. Asked to comment on the report, government spokesperson Sophie Primas expressed her solidarity with the victims but did not say what new policies the government could adopt. Alain Esquerre, a whistleblower in the Betharram case and a spokesperson for the victims, welcomed the report's findings. "Over the decades, this school did anything and everything with the children," he told RTL radio on Wednesday. REUTERS
The Guardian
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Serge Gainsbourg pretended to be an alcoholic': Jean-Claude Vannier on making a masterpiece with the louche legend
Ask a set designer to create a bohemian Paris apartment and they'll probably come up with something that looks a lot like Jean-Claude Vannier's: books everywhere, vintage Bauhaus armchairs, art on every bit of wall space. You would say the living room was dominated by his grand piano, but your eye keeps getting drawn to a plethora of toy pianos that sit on and around it. On closer inspection, there are toy pianos on the shelves too, crammed among the books. 'I've got more in the other rooms,' shrugs Vannier, speaking through an interpreter, 'and I have a house in the country that's full of them too. I take them to concerts and play a note or two. I find it adds something to a live performance that is filled with virtuosos. I have an open-tuned guitar that I kick, too – it makes a big boom.' Disrupting an orchestral performance by playing a toy piano or kicking a guitar seems characteristic: Vannier, now in his early 80s, has been a disruptive presence in French pop for 60 years. His latest project is pretty odd: a song cycle performed by a vast mandolin orchestra, accompanied by a story written by Vannier that involves a broken romance, alcoholism, homelessness and murder. 'All the great love stories are sad,' he says, 'because if people live happily ever after and have lots of children, there's not much to say.' In fairness, it's certainly less strange than the story Vannier's most famous collaborator, Serge Gainsbourg, came up with for his 1972 album L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches (The Child Fly Killer). This involved a small boy persecuting a fly before being smothered to death by a swarm of the insects. If Jean-Claude Vannier et Son Orchestre de Mandolines seems an unlikely diversion, it's no more peculiar than Vannier's 2019 album Corpse Flower, a collaboration with Faith No More's vocalist Mike Patton (a Vannier superfan who's releasing his mandolin album on his label Ipecac) that featured songs about despairing monkeys and the danger of voiding one's bowels when drunk. Nor indeed Vannier's own career as a singer-songwriter in the 70s, which came about, he says, because no one else wanted to sing his chanson-inspired songs. It's meant as no reflection on the quality of the albums to say you can see why: Vannier's idea of a single was a song called Merde, V'la le Printemps, or Shit, Here Comes Spring. 'It wasn't my intention to shock anyone,' he says. 'I just wanted to talk about what I saw around me. I had a song called Mon Beau Travelo – My Beautiful Transvestite. I was doing the music for a ballet with Roland Petit. After the performance, he would take me to the side streets off the old Paris Opera. There were many drag queens there. We used to watch them and that's what inspired the song. It was very controversial at the time, and no one was willing to sing it, but it's not shocking. It's just what I wanted to express.' Vannier's reputation, however, really rests on his arrangement and soundtrack work. David Holmes, DJ and creator of soundtracks for a host of Steven Soderbergh movies, has called Vannier 'the greatest soundtrack composer of them all, a true genius'. Vannier has worked with everyone from singer Françoise Hardy to literary provocateur Michel Houellebecq. He wrote and recorded songs with the latter, Houellebecq even taking singing lessons to get his voice up to scratch. Mentioning his name provokes a frown from Vannier: 'It's true that I've worked with him, but he's someone who will never be my friend. I met one of his publishers in an antique shop near here and they [joked], 'Houellebecq is worse than a gangster!' He has a terrible reputation, so I would never associate with him. But I'm a huge fan of his actual writing.' For all of these people, Vannier constructed astonishingly inventive orchestral arrangements, that occasionally touch on atonality and often bear the influence of music from the Middle East – the result, he says, of his disastrous first job, as an engineer in a Paris studio. 'I started with yé-yé singers, young girls and boys, and I made a lot of mistakes. So they had me record accordionists, who at that time were seen as very vulgar: their music was for Saturday night dances that were a bit violent. They didn't have a good reputation. I messed up again, because I wasn't particularly interested in this music, so they had me record Arab musicians. This was during the Algerian war: there was a lot of fear aimed at Arab people, they were not popular at all in France. I loved working with them. I was happy, because I loved Arab music.' But it's Gainsbourg who remains his most celebrated client. Vannier worked with him on the lauded soundtracks for the films Cannabis, La Horse, and Les Chemins de Katmandou and, most lauded of all, on 1971 record Histoire de Melody Nelson. A flop on release, it's now acclaimed not just as Gainsbourg's masterpiece, but one of the greatest French-language albums in pop history. Its belated rediscovery by crate-digging sample hunters and musicians in the 90s also seemed to spark a broader shift in anglophone listeners' traditionally snobbish, dismissive attitude to French pop: if something as extraordinary as this had escaped widespread attention, what else had the country's musicians produced? 'I think you're right,' says Vannier. 'When I first started receiving emails from kids in the UK that went on about how amazing this record was, I thought they were laughing at me – I know the British are very big on sarcasm. But then Mojo magazine called my daughter saying they wanted to do a big spread on me. I was astonished. I think that, quite simply, they just didn't have access to these records before. They accepted me with open arms and more. I realised I had influenced a lot of people.' You can say that again. Echoes of his dramatic Melody Nelson orchestrations can be heard everywhere from Beck's Sea Change to the Arctic Monkeys' Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino, and they've been sampled by everyone from Portishead to De La Soul. In recent years, Vannier has conducted huge, star-studded concerts of the music in London, Paris and LA. Yet his relationship with Melody Nelson is a tricky one. Vannier says he wrote most of the music – 'Sometimes Gainsbourg would come and see me with a melody, but more and more he would turn up with absolutely nothing and I would have free rein' – but Gainsbourg declined to give him a writing credit. They remained friends until the French singer's death in 1991, but Vannier seems to have found Gainsbourg's penchant for provocation a little trying. 'He pretended to be a shit-stirrer,' he says, 'because it was profitable for him financially. He wasn't really interested in politics or philosophy or psychology – he was just prompted by whatever his press people told him to do. Before TV appearances, he'd run his hands through his hair so he looked more dishevelled. At the start, he actually pretended to be an alcoholic when he wasn't – he was trying to shock on purpose to amuse his audience. At the end of his career, he genuinely was an alcoholic, but at the beginning that was a pose as well.' Melody Nelson had another belated effect. While working for a French label, the British DJ, producer and 'Gainsbourg obsessive' Andy Votel heard 'garbled rumours in Parisian record shops' about a mysterious 'Melody Nelson follow-up' that had never been released. Some of the rumours were pretty lurid: it was based on Lord of the Flies, it had an 'X-rated cover', it had been banned. It turned out they were talking about L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches. 'The guy who produced it worked with a guy called Mike Brandt, a really kitsch singer who was big in the 70s, although Eminem later sampled elements of arrangements I had created for him.' This was on 2009's Crack a Bottle. 'I'd made a few hits with this guy, so to thank me, his producer said he'd make a record with me and I could do exactly what I wanted. It was very, very expensive to make. I don't think anyone today would throw so much money at such a strange project.' The results were astonishing, if deeply weird: a melange of funk, free jazz, hard rock, musique concrète and stunning orchestrations. His label was so horrified, it refused to press more than a handful of copies. If Vannier was surprised by the belated interest in Melody Nelson, it was nothing compared to his bafflement when Votel contacted him, asking to rerelease it, which he did in 2005 to vast acclaim. It's been quite a career. At 82, Vannier 'doesn't do much work' nowadays, but doesn't give much outward impression of slowing down, with another soundtrack coming up. Perhaps he can't stop. 'When you love music,' he says, 'there's absolutely nothing that can prevent you from making your own music. My parents were devout Protestants. They absolutely hated artists. There was absolutely no way I was going to pursue a career in music. But once I turned 18, I had the right to do so. When your real passion is music, it's like a tide that absolutely nothing can stop.' Jean-Claude Vannier et Son Orchestre de Mandolines is out now on Ipecac.
