French PM Under Growing Pressure Over Catholic School Abuse Claims

France’s prime minister was under increasing pressure Friday after a former teacher at a Catholic school claimed Francois Bayrou was aware of claims of sexual abuse there in the 1990s but did not act on them.

Bayrou has in recent days faced accusations from the opposition that as education minister in the mid-1990s he knew of widespread physical and sexual abuse at the Catholic boarding school to which he sent some of his children.

Since last year, prosecutors have been investigating more than 100 complaints of violence, assault and rape over many decades at the Notre-Dame de Betharram school near the southwestern town of Pau where Bayrou has been mayor since 2014.

Bayrou, 73, who served as the country’s education minister between 1993 and 1997, has denied any wrong-doing.

In total, 112 people have made accusations of rape and sexual assault against 11 people, eight of them now deceased, with those acts alleged to have taken place between 1955 and 2004, according to prosecutors.

The prosecutor’s office in Pau on Friday charged one suspect — a former monitor at the school born in 1965 — with rape and aggravated sexual assault, it said.

He was arrested earlier this week with the two other suspects still alive, including a former priest in his 90s. The other two were both released due to the statute of limitations.

On Thursday, Francoise Gullung, who taught mathematics at the boarding school between 1994 and 1996, told French investigative website Mediapart that Bayrou and his wife, who taught religious studies there, had ignored her warnings about the “systemic violence” against the boarders.

Bayrou insisted both he and his wife were innocent.

“There is nothing more shameful than targeting someone’s family in order to get to them politically,” he told journalists.

“Those who whip up these scandals are not interested in the victims, they are not interested in justice,” he said.

What interested them was whether they could stir up a scandal “that would have political repercussions for the government and the prime minister”, he added.

Bayrou, a veteran centrist named by President Emmanuel Macron in December to end months of political crisis after inconclusive snap polls, does not have a majority in parliament and depends on the support of the Socialists.

He has survived multiple no-confidence motions partially due to support from the Socialists. Losing their backing over the school sexual abuse scandal would be a major blow.

Education Minister Elisabeth Borne said it was “hard to understand how we didn’t react sooner.

“The state failed to step up in this case,” she told broadcaster BFMTV/RMC. But she also accused the hard left of seeking to take advantage of the uproar.

Pau prosecutor Rodolphe Jarry earlier on Friday said boys aged nine to 17 at the time of the events lived in a “climate of terror” at the school.

Some of the boarders said the experience had scarred them for life.

Jean-Marie Delbos, 78, said that in the late 1950s the priest would visit boys at night, “with his cassock open.” He would crouch at the foot of the bed to grope and perform oral sex, he said last week.

Brice Ducos, 49, who attended the boarding school between 1984 and 1991, said he was “subjected to punishments and violence.

“We were fondled when we came out of the showers,” he added.

Ducos’s complaint targeted a former supervisor who was detained and then released.

A collective of school survivors, which has recorded more than 140 complaints, said it was “delighted to finally be heard by the justice system”.

Spokesman Alain Esquerre urged others to speak out and expressed regret that a probe had not been opened against the school itself.

“We’re just getting started. This is a sprawling case, there are going to be new complaints,” the former boarder told journalists in Pau.

“The state has failed and has not protected the children of Betharram.”