France’s premier faces questions from an inquiry on a Catholic school abuse scandal

PARIS (AP) —

French Prime Minister François Bayrou was set to face questions Wednesday from a parliamentary inquiry into alleged abuse at a Catholic school amid accusations that he has hidden what he knows about the scandal.

Lawmakers at the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, are expected to ask Bayrou what he knew about allegations of physical and sexual abuse over five decades at the private Catholic school Notre-Dame de Bétharram, near the town of Pau in southwestern France.

Bayrou is a longtime and prominent elected official in that region and a number of his children attended the school. He has been the mayor of Pau since 2014 and continues to hold that office since becoming prime minister five months ago. He has been a member of parliament from that area for about 20 years and was the national education minister from 1993 to 1997.

Over 200 complaints have been formally filed since February 2024 over alleged abuse at the school, including dozens of alleged rapes by priests, said Alain Esquerre, the spokesperson for a group of victims.

The scandal took a political turn when Bayrou told the National Assembly in February that he had never been informed of abuse at the school until recent years. A few days later, he said he actually had been aware of “a slap” by a school supervisor in 1996 when he was education minister, leading him to commission a report.

Political opponents have accused him of having lied to parliament.

Bayrou has links to the school on a personal level because several of his six children attended the school and his wife used to teach catechism there.

In 1998, Father Carricart, the school’s former director from 1987 to 1993, was handed preliminary charges of rape against children under 18 and placed in custody.

A judge who handled that case told the parliament's inquiry commission that he had a meeting with Bayrou at the time, during which the politician expressed concern about his son, who was a student at the school.

Carricart committed suicide in 2000 before a trial could be held.

Bayrou's eldest daughter, Hélène Perlant, last month revealed she was among children who were abused, saying a priest beat her at summer camp when she was 14. Now 53, Perlant said she never talked about it to her father or anyone else until the recent release of a book in which she tells her story. “I remained silent for 30 years,” she said.

Esquerre, the spokesperson for the victims, himself a former student and victim of abuse, told the inquiry commission in March that “it was a time of terror, and no one could imagine that we were in the hands of priests who were also the aggressors.”

Showing a printout with a list of names, Esquerre said : ”I am holding here a list of all the priests over the last 70 years, all of them aggressors, all these priests. And so, there still is a number of victims who will little by little, of course, join the already substantial number of plaintiffs.”