A daughter of the Prime Minister of France became Wednesday in the last to accuse the clergy who runs a school in the Pyrenees of systemic abuse, even while Francois Bayrou was a local official, saying that a priest beat the heir’s summer camp when he was 14 years old.
Bayrou’s eldest daughter, Helen Perland, who is now 53 years old and uses her mother’s name, said her father did not know about the incident.
Multiple accusations of sexual and physical abuse in Betharram’s Notre-Dame boarding school have thrown a shadow on Bayrou’s Premier League.
Several of his children attended the Catholic School, and his wife taught religious studies there.
Bayrou has been accused of knowing some of the accusations already in the 1990s as Minister of Education and as a local official, he says he has denied.
Perland, a former Betharram student, said a priest hit her in front of the summer camp of his classmates in the early 1980s.
“One night, when we were unpacking our sleeping bags, (father) Lartiguet suddenly grabbed me by the hair, he dragged me down the floor for several meters, then hit me and kicked me everywhere, especially Wedom,” he said.
“I got wet and stayed like this all night, wet and rolled up in a ball in my sleeping bag,” he said.
‘Like a sect’
The next day, he said, he separated from a walk with the rest of the group, “she fashed everything” minimized to show the priest that he had accused her of being “rude as your father” who was not her victim.
“Bethharram was organized as a sect or a totalitarian regime that exerted psychological pressure on students and teachers, so they remained silent,” said Perland.
“I was silent about it for 30 years,” he said.
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“Maybe unconsciously wanted to protect my father from the political blows that I was turning locally,” he added.
“He doesn’t know I’m a victim.”
In total, 200 legal complaints have been filed since February last year accusing the priests and Betharram staff of physical or sexual abuse from 1957 to 2004, according to an association of victims.
Ninety of these complaints group sexual violence, including one that alleges rape in a group of two priests.
But only two complaints have led to charges against a former supervisor for alleged sexual aggression of a minor in 2004 and violation of a minor from 1991 to 1994.
All other accusations have approved the Statute of Limitations.
Bayrou will be questioned by parliamentary investigation on accusations on May 14.
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