“We heard the blows”, an ex-teacher calls into question François Bayrou and his wife

A former teacher from Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram claims to have alerted in vain François Bayrou and his wife on violence within the establishment in the 1990s. While the case resurfaces, the Prime Minister claims to have never been informed of the facts at the time.

A former professor of the Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram establishment says again, in a video published Thursday by Mediapart, that François Bayrou and his wife did not take into account his warnings concerning the violence suffered by the students of this Béarnais private establishment. Teacher in mathematics between 1994 and 1996, a period during which a student of a student filed a first complaint and while François Bayrou is Minister of Education, she declares that she had sent him a letter that has remained unanswered, insists Françoise Gullung.

In early February, she told AFP that she had reported on several occasions to the competent authorities, such as child protection and the diocese, the existence of a weighing climate, marked by unusual hostility and tensions. In his exchange with Mediapartshe evokes an episode involving the wife of François Bayrou, then in charge of catechism lessons within the establishment, where several of their children were registered. “There was a classroom in which we heard an adult screaming on a child, we heard the blows and we heard the child who begged that we stop,” she says.

“It was normal for us to beat them”

“I turn to Élisabeth Bayrou and ask her what we can do. For me that means that two, we can perhaps open the door. But she didn’t understand that. She Simply answered, I do not remember the exact terms, but that these children, there was nothing to draw from it, “added the former teacher. “I had the impression that for her, these children were of a species lower than her family (…), that it was normal that we beat them,” she deplores.

She also mentions an episode in 1995, when she expressed her concerns directly to François Bayrou during an official event in Pau. “I tell him that you have to do something because it is very serious what is happening in Betharram. And he replies: ‘Yes, we dramatized’.”

Confronted with strong pressure for fifteen days, the head of government said on several occasions, both before the deputies and by the media, that he had never known the facts which are today alleged. According to his entourage, the article of Mediapart “is a dangerous delirium”, claiming that “the only thing that counts is to allow victims to be heard, to find compensation and to see the culprits answer for their actions”.