The daughter of France’s prime minister François Bayrou has come forward with harrowing claims of abuse, amid a growing scandal engulfing a Catholic school in south-western France. Hélène Perlant, now 53, told Paris Match that she was violently assaulted by a senior priest at Notre-Dame de Bétharram during a summer camp in the 1980s, when she was just 14. Perlant described being dragged by the hair, punched and kicked in front of her peers, and left in distress throughout the night. Despite the traumatic ordeal, she never informed her father, who was unaware of her silence for decades.
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The Bétharram case has shaken the French political landscape, casting a long shadow over Bayrou’s legacy. He has consistently denied any knowledge of abuse at the school, even as over 200 complaints—90 of them for sexual violence—have emerged against priests and staff, spanning from 1957 to 2004. The situation has raised serious concerns about accountability, particularly given Bayrou’s longstanding ties to the school, where his children were pupils and his wife taught catechism.
Perlant, whose testimony will appear in a forthcoming book by survivors, compared the school’s environment to a sect, citing psychological pressure that kept victims and staff silent. She confessed that she stayed quiet to shield her father from political fallout. Left-wing MPs have accused Bayrou of concealing the abuse during his time as education minister in the 1990s. In a heated exchange in parliament, MP Paul Vannier accused the prime minister of misleading lawmakers to cover up institutional violence, a charge Bayrou rejected as “artificial controversy.”
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Fresh testimony, however, threatens to undermine Bayrou’s defence. A former investigator testified under oath that a judge told him Bayrou had intervened to delay a rape investigation in 1998—an assertion partly corroborated by the judge involved. Bayrou, who has served as mayor of Pau since 2014, continues to deny any interference in legal matters. He is expected to appear before the parliamentary commission on 14 May to address these serious allegations.
