LESTELLE-BéTHARRAM (FRANCE)
France 24 [Paris, France]
April 25, 2025
By Sonya Ciesnik
The daughter of French Prime Minister François Bayrou has recently revealed being a victim of abuse at a Catholic boarding school. Her testimony has fuelled fresh accusations against Bayrou of dishonesty over his knowledge of allegations of abuse at Notre-Dame de Bétharram Catholic school from the 1950s until the 2000s.
The daughter of French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Wednesday accused clergy at the Catholic Notre-Dame de Bétharram school in the Pyrenees of systemic abuse, alleging a priest beat her at summer camp when she was 14—while her father was serving as a local official.
Bayrou has been under fire for failing to report the multiple allegations of abuse when he was education minister in the 1990s, but he has repeatedly insisted he knew nothing about the incidents.
The eldest daughter of France’s Prime Minister François Bayrou, Hélène Perlant, recently revealed that she had been beaten by a priest while she was a teenager attending a Catholic school near his home town of Pau.
Her account comes after over 200 now adult victims have filed complaints about the physical, sexual, and psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of clergy at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school between the 1960s up until the 2000s.
Perlant appeared to contradict her father’s claims of being unaware of the widespread abuse while he was involved in local government in the area, and during his time as education minister.
“I don’t think he [my father] remembers, but I was there the evening he came back from Judge Mirande’s,” she said during a televised Mediapart interview. Her father asked her at the time if she thought the allegations could be true, she added.
The judge, Christian Mirande, confirmed that he had discussed the allegations with Bayrou in 1998, but said the now prime minister was probably already informed by the local media.
Betharram affair: French PM Bayrou’s daughter reveals she was a victim of abuse (please see original article for video)
Bayrou had initially claimed that he never discussed the allegations with the judge.
“Like the testimonies of the other victims, the account of Hélène Perlant contradicts the words of François Bayrou,” wrote the MP Paul Vannier, of the leftwing party France Unbowed (La France InSoumise) on X.
‘Punched and kicked me all over’
Perlant, now 53, had been a victim herself during a summer camp run by the school in the 1980s. “One night when we were unpacking our sleeping bags, [Father] Lartiguet suddenly grabbed me by the hair, dragged me across the floor for several metres, then punched and kicked me all over, especially in the stomach,” she told Paris Match magazine.
“I wet myself and stayed like that all night, damp and rolled up in a ball in my sleeping bag,” she added.
Her disclosure came shortly before the publication of a collection of survivor’s accounts titled “The Silence of Bétharram”, co-written by Alain Esquerre, spokesperson for the victims of the institution, and the journalist Clémence Badault. The book aims to raise awareness about the sadistic and ongoing abuse at the Catholic school by giving a voice to the victims.
Perlant has protected her father, saying, “I place him on the same level as all the parents. The more involved you are, the less you see and the less you understand.”
Perlant said she had not told her father about her own experience until this week. “The real question is one of denial, at the individual and collective level. Not one of lies,” Perlant said.
France: New book exposes Betharram abuse scandal, raising tensions among Catholic schools please see original article for video)
“As a father, it stabs me in the heart… it’s almost unbearable,” Bayrou said of learning of his daughter’s experience. “I was never informed of anything regarding violence [in the school].”
The prime minister, who leads a centrist minority government, is scheduled to appear on May 14 before a parliamentary inquiry.
The growing scandal over allegations concerning the Bétharram school comes as France struggles to come to grips with another alleged cover-up by the Catholic Church.
The late Abbé Pierre, a French Catholic priest who founded a major charity, is said to have abused women since the 1950s.
The Vatican was aware for decades of the priest’s offences but failed to act.