A year after revelations on physical and sexual violence suffered by students from the former Notre-Dame de Betharram institution, near Pau, the case returns to the front of the stage. Back on the hundred complaints and accusations.
112 complaints filed to denounce physical abuse and sexual violence, sometimes going as far as rape, which occurred for more than 50 years behind the walls of Notre-Dame de Betharram. The case is unprecedented. The facts denounced by the complainants, who are mainly former residents of the Catholic college-lycée founded in 1837 in Lestelle-Bétharram, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, took place between the 1950s and the early 2010s.
But it was not until the approach to the year 2000 a first investigation revealed these violence and mistreatment, especially after the first rape complaint aimed at Father Carricart who was then the director of The Notre-Dame de Betharram institution. The affair broke out again and gained the magnitude that is known today in January 2024 after the reports and complaints filed by a collective of former students of the establishment. Since then, languages have been delighted and testimonies have flocking on ill -treatment and sexual violence inflicted on former residents. Some have mentioned “a regime of terror” in the columns of World.
Body abuse, punishment of “Perron” and rapes
Of the 112 complaints filed against the Notre-Dame de Bétharram institution according to the count of Alain Esquerre, founder of the collective of former students created in 2023, around 50 denounce sexual facts according to the Pau prosecution. They aim for both religious and lay people who worked as supervisors in the establishment. The complainants denounce touch -ups and sexual assaults that could take place in the corridors, but also in dormitories when religious and lay officials introduced themselves into the rooms. Jean-Marie Delbos, one of the oldest complainants educated in Betharram between 1957 and 1961, evokes the night visits that a priest made to children with France 3 : “He came open sustain, and he was masturbating, he made us blowjob. From there, he left on another bed and he was doing his thing. He said to us ‘go back, it’s okay’.” “I was terrorized, incapable of the slightest reaction. I was fifteen,” he recalls.
Former students who have not been raped sometimes consider themselves “lucky” to have “only” been affected or physically abused. The Notre-Dame de Betharram institution, who was known to discipline his residents with muscular methods plunged children into a violent climate according to several testimonies: “He who was not struck was not respected there”, slipped a complainant At World in 2024. The stories mention so violent slaps that one of them made part of the hearing to a child according to a complaint of 1966 and which could leave “bloody faces”. Slaps, strokes of rule on the fingers “to blood” or even abuses such as “staying on a knees on a metallic rule until the drops of blood” are cited as punishment . But the complainants keep in memory one of the worst punishment: the punishment of the “porch” which consisted in making them spend the night outside half naked or simply dressed in pajamas in very cold, even negative temperatures.
“Acts of physical violence and sexual abuse” which continued until recently since the last complaints filed relate to facts that have occurred “between 2013 and 2016”, said Alain Esquerre to France 3.
Accusations of rape and suicide
The complaints having reacted the most are those filed against Father Carricart in the late 1990s for at least two rapes. The first complaint accused the priest who directed the religious institution at the time of having violated a young boy after having announced the death of his father. “Father Carricart had awakened the student to tell him this death and told him that he had to go to the funeral to Bordeaux. Before leaving for the train, the religious made him take a shower and imposed him a blowjob While the child was completely struck by the announcement of his father’s death, “said Christian Mirande, investigating judge in the Pau court who was in charge of the investigation in 1998, at Mediapart.
The second complaint concerned a marginalized boy that Father Carricart always took with him during the holiday camps to “avoid so-called family problems” and on which the religious carried out rapes, still according to the investigating judge retirement. The priest, under investigation and a time placed in pre -trial detention after the filing of the first complaint, committed suicide before being heard on the second case by throwing himself into the Tiber in 2000.
Dozens of implications, some are still alive
The Notre-Dame de Bétharram affair and the complaints linked to it call 22 adults and a person who was minor at the time of the facts. 12 of these individuals are still alive. The charges are focused on two lay people who are still alive today and a deceased priest with 59, 23 and 17 complaints filed against them, specifies Franceinfo. The religious in question could be Father Carricart.
If more than a hundred complaints have been filed to date, Alain Esquerre estimates that many other acts of violence and sexual violence have not yet been revealed. “I think this is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said to 20 minutes evoking the people who say that the facts are prescribed, those who do not believe in the holding of a trial and those for whom it is “too painful” to talk about it. And the whistleblower of this case to add: “This is why I think that a new complaint of complaints will now be possible only when a judicial information will be open. These people will then be reassured to see that their word is recognized by the judicial institution “.