PARIS (FRANCE)
RFI - Radio France Internationale [Paris, France]
April 11, 2025
French Prime Minister François Bayrou will appear before a parliamentary commission on 14 May to answer questions about his role in a 1998 investigation into alleged child sexual abuse at a Catholic school when he was education minister. Other former holders of the post, as well as the incumbent Education Minister Élisabeth Borne, have also been called for questioning.
The inquiry is examining state oversight of private schools, including the Bétharram case – a scandal involving decades of alleged physical and sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school in the southwest of France.
Bayrou has been summoned in his capacity as a former education minister, a post he held between 1993 and 1997.
He has repeatedly denied accusations that he had been informed of the abuse as early as the 1990s and failed to act, despite testimonies suggesting otherwise.
The commission, overseen by MPs Paul Vannier and Violette Spillebout, is calling other former education ministers Nicole Belloubet, Pap N’Diaye and Jean-Michel Blanquer, as well as the current holder of the post, Élisabeth Borne.
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“There are no new elements… I have provided all the information on this case,” Bayrou told reporters last month, describing the controversy as “artificial polemics”.
His office confirmed to French news agency AFP that he will attend the hearing on 14 May.
Contradictions
After Thursday’s session, Vannier said he was under the impression that Bayrou lied because other testimonies “contradict point by point” the prime minister’s version of events.
One of these accounts came from a former gendarme who told the commission that a judge mentioned an “intervention” by Bayrou during the 1998 investigation.
Alain Hontangs, a former investigator, said under oath that the judge in charge of the case told him the presentation of the accused priest was being postponed.
“The judge was waiting for me outside his office door and told me: the presentation is delayed, the prosecutor general wants to see the file, there has been an intervention from François Bayrou,” Hontangs said. He also said he was not the only one aware of the comment.
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He previously shared the same account in February on a French television report aired on TF1.
At that time, Bayrou told the National Assembly he had “never” intervened “neither directly nor indirectly”.
Judge Christian Mirande confirmed he had been asked to delay the procedure. “The prosecutor general asked me to postpone the presentation of Carricart, which was surprising,” he said.
But, he added, “I have no recollection of mentioning an intervention by François Bayrou.”
Case stalled
Father Pierre Silviet-Carricart, the school’s former director, was eventually charged and detained, then released under judicial supervision two weeks later.
A letter shown to the commission revealed that the prosecutor general reported the release to then-justice minister Élisabeth Guigou, noting the possibility of further investigation.
Mirande said he later identified two more potential victims, but the case stalled after Carricart was allowed to travel to Rome in 1999. Carricart died by suicide in 2000.
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“It’s a case that leaves me with a lot of bitterness, many regrets,” the judge said.
Mirande also contradicted Bayrou’s account of their contact during the investigation. “It wasn’t by chance – he came to my home to discuss it,” Mirande told the commission.
He said Bayrou was concerned about his son, who attended the school, and found the allegations difficult to believe. “He couldn’t believe the reality of what was being said about Father Carricart, whom he seemed to know,” Mirande added.
Bayrou had previously denied that such a meeting took place.
Borne said on Thursday that an investigation would be launched into the private Catholic school Le Beau Rameau, the current name of Notre-Dame de Bétharram. This follows the publication of the report of an inspection carried out in March.