While Prime Minister François Bayrou receives the association of Victims of Betharram, the elements proving that he knew the acts of violence is raining.
“We are making the trial of François Bayrou, it will be the trial of the whole local population: everyone knew,” says Alain Esquerre, spokesperson for the Betharram victims association, at the microphone of BFMTV. However, the Prime Minister says he never was aware. But the archives prove the opposite, as Mediapart and The world.
“I have never been, at that time, warned in anything that gave rise to complaints or reports,” assured François Bayrou to the National Assembly on Wednesday, February 12. The file already includes more than 100 complaints for physical and sexual violence committed against the students of Notre-Dame de Bétharram, a Catholic college-lycée located near Pau, a case going from the 1960s to 2010.
François Bayrou also meets the members of the association of victims at the town hall of Pau on Saturday February 15. At the microphone of France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitainethe representative of the victims said that violence within the establishment constituted “the DNA of this establishment”. “This is why our parents, sometimes, put us on it! To rectify the not wise children! The reign of silence was, Betharram.”
“It was said that in boarding school, maybe there were slaps, I don’t know”
As Minister of National Education between 1993 and 1997 – the first turmoil of the case that broke out in 1996 by a first complaint – Alain Esquerre believes that François Bayrou should have done better. “Everyone has dysfunction in fact. And François Bayrou in it did not do better than the others.” The head of government persists in denying any knowledge of the case to the World : If he was “aware of these cases”, if he had known that it was there “things of this order”, he “will not have[t] not educated [ses] children in [cet] establishment”.
However, the whole contradicts. “It was said that in the boarding school, perhaps there were slaps, I do not know,” he himself eluded. When a child lost 40% of his hearing after a slap inflicted by a supervisor, the father of the victim claims to have discussed it with Pierre Laguilhon, deputy for deputy François Bayrou, then minister. And the son of François Bayrou was in the same class as the victim, according to the family lawyer. Difficult then to think that the current tenant of Matignon had not been informed almost 30 years ago.
What a former math teacher corroborates, François Gullung, with the newspaper: “I have very precisely said [à François Bayrou]of which once face-to-face, that it was important to go and worry about what was happening in Betharram because there were serious things there, “she said, adding That she and the nurse of the establishment also each sent letters, which remained unanswered.
François Bayrou had already defended the establishment in 1996
The implicated supervisor was sentenced to a fine of 5,000 francs suspended in 1996. And the case had had some media repercussions, to the point that in May of the same year, François Bayrou and Philippe Douste-Blazy, respective ministers at the time of National Education and Culture, had visited the establishment . On the occasion of the restoration of the chapel, of course. But François Bayrou had defended the college: “Many Béarnais felt these attacks with a painful feeling and a feeling of injustice. He is not the Minister, it is not the parent of students who Speak is the Béarnais. “
And to continue: “All the information that the Minister could request, he asked for it. All checks were favorable and positive. The rest is undergoing his course,” he told the press at the time, as taken up by Mediapart. François Bayrou was therefore aware of a fact of violence within the establishment.
And what about sexual violence committed on students? The former director of the institution Pierre Silviet-Carricart had been indicted for rape in 1998, a case relayed by all local and national media, insists The world. And the investigating judge in charge of the case, Christian Mirande, said in March 2024 to the newspaper having received a visit from François Bayrou on this subject. What the Prime Minister denies today.
It is therefore a question of understanding why François Bayrou continues to deny, especially since the more the evidence accumulates, the more the hypothesis that he has hidden a scandal of sexual violence on minors is anchored.