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Abuse at Bétharram School Went on for Years with 'Absence of Action' From PM Bayrou
- On June 24, 2025, a French parliamentary inquiry released a 330-page report exposing unchecked physical and sexual abuse at Notre-Dame de Bétharram school during François Bayrou’s 1993–1997 tenure as education minister.
- The report found the violence was institutionalized with influential supporters and a strong code of silence, while Bayrou, whose children attended the school, denied prior knowledge or wrongdoing.
- Lawmakers heard testimonies from 140 people over three months, describing abuses of unprecedented severity and absolute sadism, with about 200 legal complaints filed since early 2024 accusing priests and staff from 1957 to 2004.
- Co-Rapporteurs Violette Spillebout and Paul Vannier condemned the state’s failure to protect children and urged reforms including new surveys, stricter background checks, annual inspections, and a national reporting platform.
- Bayrou survived a no-confidence vote but faces increasing pressure amid calls for stronger oversight to address systemic flaws and ongoing violence in French schools.
42 Articles
42 Articles
François Bayrou is the most unpopular Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic. But despite incriminating accusations in an abuse scandal and a meager balance, the centrist remains in office – due to lack of better alternatives?
A parliamentary inquiry has found that students at a Catholic boarding school in France were subjected to years of sexual abuse and mistreatment. The report criticizes the country's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou for failing to act on alarming reports about the situation at the school. "Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram is the gulag of the Pyrenees," former student Alain Esquerre told Le Parisien.
Parents, school principals and the government have looked the other way and remained silent in recent decades when reports of abuse and sexual violence at Catholic schools in France came in. "Victims have spoken out, but they were not listened to enough," says an investigative committee of the French House of Representatives, the Assemblée. Over the past three months, this committee has been investigating reports about one Catholic school in the…
The long-awaited report of the parliamentary committee on violence in schools, launched after the Betharram scandal, was unveiled this Wednesday. It concludes with a "failure of action" by François Bayrou at the time and makes more widely 50 recommendations to better protect children. TF1's JT received the reaction of the spokesman for a group of former students of Betharram and takes stock of what it contains. - "It goes relatively far": for th…
While the case of Saint-Jean de Pélussin is embarrassing for François Bayrou, it is also an example of the dizziness of the National Education to take measures to protect children from suspicions of violence
The 'premier' was Minister of Education at the time of the events. The parliamentary body highlights "the responsibility of the State" and proposes a compensation fund for the victims.
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Bias Distribution
- 42% of the sources are Center
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