French prime minister shocked by daughter's school abuse revelation

François Bayrou denies knowing about abuse allegations at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram during his time as education minister in the 1990s.

The daughter of French Prime Minister François Bayrou has claimed that she was physically abused as a child at the Catholic school which is at the centre of the political storm rocking his premiership. French media reported that Bayrou was in shock after learning that Hélène Perlant, 53, the eldest of his six children, was among the alleged victims at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school, located near his hometown in southwest France. Hundreds of its former pupils have filed legal complaints over the last year, saying they suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the institution’s staff between 1957 and 2004. Bayrou has been accused of knowing about abuse allegations at the school but failing to act on them during his time as education minister in the 1990s, something he strongly denies. In an interview published this week by Paris Match, his daughter Perlant said she was targeted by one of the school’s priests while attending a summer camp in the Pyrenees.Perlant, who was 14 at the time of the attack, said the group was unpacking their sleeping bags when the priest “suddenly grabbed me by the hair, dragged me along the ground for several metres and punched and kicked me all over my body, especially in the stomach”. The incident left her “covered in bruises” and suffering “severe tinnitus”, she added.Bayrou’s daughter made the revelation ahead of the publication on Thursday of The Silence of Bétharram, a book authored by fellow victim Alain Esquerre, which contains testimonies from Perlant and others. “I kept quiet for 30 years,” Perlant told Paris Match. “I may have wanted to protect my father, unconsciously, I think, from the political blows he was taking locally.” Perlant said the school “was organised like a sect or a totalitarian regime exerting psychological pressure on students and teachers to keep quiet”.The 53-year-old also insisted that her father did not know what was happening at the school. “Obviously, one might think he had all the information,” she said. “But I put him on the same level as all parents. The more involved you are, the less you see, the less you understand.”Bayrou, who became prime minister in December, said in February that he would take legal action against Mediapart over its claim that he must have known about abuse at the school during the 1990s.“I was never informed of this sexual violence,“ he told the National Assembly.The French prime minister is due to testify in parliament on 14 May as part of an inquiry into violence in schools.