The Congregation of the Fathers of Bétharram has acknowledged responsibility in widespread sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school it oversees near the town of southwestern town of Pau, where Prime Minister François Bayrou has been mayor since 2014. Meanwhile a prosecutor has dismissed complaints alleging Bayrou failed to act on the abuse when he was education minister in the 1990s.
Since last year, police have received more than 150 complaints of violence, sexual assault and rape against former religious figures and lay personnel at the Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram boarding school. The alleged abuse occurred between the 1950s and 2010's.
A judicial investigation was opened on 21 February for rape and sexual assault. Only one of the three men placed in police custody was indicted – the other two benefiting from the statute of limitations, some dating back 70 years.
The Catholic priests who ran the school for many years spoke out on Tuesday for the first time.
"We are still deeply affected by what happened ... by the suffering of these children who came here to be protected, educated, but instead ... were destroyed," priest Laurent Bacho told French media on behalf of the Congregation of Fathers of Bétharram.
"It took us time to reach an irreversible, common position," the 75-year-old said.
Bacho said he had met eight victims so far and had "never doubted their words". He described discovering the allegations against his "brothers" as "painful" for the congregation.
"It wasn’t me personally, but I am part of this body. I'm not guilty but I am responsible," he said.
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Compensation and inquiry
The congregation has so far paid out €700,000 – 60 percent of its financial resources – in compensation to 19 victims of abuse. The cases are prescribed since they fell beyond the statute of limitations.
The congregation said it planned to extend compensation to victims of abuse by lay staff by selling off some of its real estate.
Bacho promised an independent commission, funded by the congregation, will also be created to investigate the causes of the abuse, which he attributed to "deviant individuals" rather than a systemic failure.
French Education Minister Élisabeth Borne said last month that "the State failed to intervene", noting that the institution was inspected only once in 30 years (in 1996), despite multiple reports of abuse.
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Case against Bayrou dismissed
The Betharram scandal has piled pressure on Prime Minister François Bayrou, who was education minister from 1993 to 1997. Several of his children attended the school, and his wife taught bible studies there.
Bayrou has repeatedly denied accusations that he'd been informed of the abuse as early as the 1990s and failed to act on them, despite testimonies suggesting otherwise.
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Two MPs with the hard-left France Unbowed party filed complaints with the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) over the prime minister's failure to take action.
On Monday, Rémy Heitz, the attorney general at the Court of Cassation, dismissed the complaints.
"Given the elements brought to the attention of the general prosecutor's office and the results of the verifications carried out, no offence falling under the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the Republic appears to be established against Mr. François Bayrou, in his capacity as former education minister from March 30, 1993, to June 2, 1997," Heitz said in a statement.
However, the scandal and the way Bayrou has communicated on it has seen his popularity plummet over the last month. A recent survey for Public Sénat found that only 26 percent of the French thought he was a good head of government.
