The scandal of alleged child sex abuse at the Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram private Catholic school in south-west France shows no sign of abating, and the flow of fresh criminal complaints continues. On February 27th, Alain Esquerre, founder of the collective for victims of Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram, handed over a new batch of 40 statements to public prosecutor Rodolphe Jarry at the court in nearby Pau. In 22 cases these accounts involve allegations of physical violence and in 18 cases sexual violence, all at the hands of staff members at the Catholic institution.
Speaking on the courthouse steps after a meeting between the prosecutor and 49 victims, Alain Esquerre pointed out that most of the offences reported by the 152 complainants are now time-barred under the criminal law, despite some complaints having been previously flagged - but ignored - at the time.
The victims group's spokesperson also directly called on the priests of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Betharram, the Catholic community body which has run the school since it was founded in 1837, to take action. “We urge [members of] the congregation to break their silence and admit their guilt, to fully acknowledge their responsibility for the criminal acts committed by their priests, as well as by their lay staff, who acted under their full authority,” he declared, adding that he hoped the Catholic institution's own responsibly as a “legal entity” could also be looked at.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
This community of priests at Bétharram has indeed remained largely silent in the face of the flood of testimonies since the victims' collective was formed in late 2023 and a criminal investigation into abuse at the school was launched in February 2024. “Numerous complaints have been lodged with the public prosecutor in Pau, which explains the few statements from our congregation, as we are keen to respect the ongoing judicial process,” the congregation stated in a press release on September 6th 2024, while also declaring itself “determined to support the victims of sexual abuse and physical violence”.
The community, founded by Father Michel Garicoïx, who was canonised in 1947, also said it had been contacted by victims who had come forward to the Commission Indépendante sur les Abus Sexuels dans l’Église (CIASE), whose independent report on sexual abuse in the church was completed in 2021. Meetings were then arranged with those former pupils who had reported abuse, facilitated by the Commission Reconnaissance et Réparation (CRR), an independent body set up after CIASE’s work to provide support for victims.
“At the conclusion of these meetings, letters of recognition and financial compensation were issued,” the congregation stated in its September press release, without providing further details. Speaking to Mediapart, Father Jean-Dominique Delgue, vicar general of the religious community, confirmed that to date it had signed “sixteen letters of acknowledgement for victims of sexual abuse committed by religious figures at the Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram institution in collaboration with the CRR”.
These various “abuses” took place “between 1957 and 1997,” the cleric added, without giving further details on the nature of the offences or when they were reported. The vicar general declined Mediapart's request to access the community’s archives, stating that they “would be made available to the judiciary if requested”.
This refusal only deepens the lack of transparency over how the church handled certain warnings at Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram, particularly given that the Bishop of Bayonne, the traditionalist cleric Marc Aillet whose diocese includes Pau and the school, remains the only prelate in France to have refused to open his archives to CIASE during its investigation, as Mediapart revealed in 2021.
There has never been any public reaction from either ecclesiastical or civil authorities to the bishop's opposition to granting access to documents that could help identify potential perpetrators, locate victims, and assess the diocese’s response to allegations.
No response from François Bayrou
Among the victims who received compensation is Jean-Marie Delbos, a pioneer in the fight for recognition of the suffering caused at Bétharram. Now aged 78, he spent years trying to have the rapes he suffered in the 1950s acknowledged. He was assaulted by a cassock-wearing priest at the boarding school and even went so far as to stage a solitary protest to show what he had been through, on the day the French Bishops' Conference inaugurated a memorial in nearby Lourdes.
After finally being recognised as a victim, he wrote to François Bayrou in March 2024, asking him to take a stand and acknowledge his silence in the face of Bétharram’s systemic abuse. He never received a response from Bayrou, who has been the mayor of Pau since 2014 and whose own children attended the school.
Following mediation by the CRR, the congregation formally acknowledged to Jean-Marie Delbos the sexual crimes he endured from the age of ten and their impact on his life. This was set out in a settlement agreement signed on March 20th 2023 by the Bétharram priests' regional vicar Jean-Marie Ruspil. As part of this agreement, the religious community committed not only to compensating the victim but also, as he had requested, to banning Henri Lamasse, the priest who raped Jean-Marie Delbos and who is now in a care home, from any external ministry.
This letter of recognition will not erase what you have endured. We're well aware of that.
A similar mediation process led to Némès Ehongo-Grasset, a pupil at Bétharram from 1986 to 1992, also being recognised as a victim of another priest, Father Bernard Ségur, who was the director of the institution.
“As the legal representative of the congregation, I have taken your request very seriously. Today, I approach you with deep shame and humility to express my full compassion and offer my sincere apologies for these acts committed against you,” wrote Jean-Marie Ruspil in a letter dated November 25th 2024, marking the conclusion of the CRR process.
As Némès Ehongo-Grasset said on a Mediapart broadcast, the abuse he suffered as a teenager had a profound effect on his life. “This letter of recognition will not erase what you have endured. We're well aware of that,” acknowledged the regional vicar in his letter. The cleric then added: “However, it re-establishes the truth of what you suffered and its consequences. Through this recognition and the financial compensation we will provide, we hope to contribute to the reparation that the depraved actions of one of our brothers compel us to make.”
No more than 60,000 euros
The CRR’s guidelines stipulate that compensation - calculated according to a set scale and paid by the relevant congregations - cannot exceed 60,000 euros. This limit has been justified by the need to ensure the system’s financial sustainability in the face of the staggering number of victims. According to CIASE, 330,000 minors suffered sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in France between 1950 and 2020. However, this cap has drawn criticism, as highlighted in the commission’s own initial assessment published in December 2024.
Furthermore, the CRR’s remit does not cover victims of physical violence or abuse perpetrated by laypeople, a category that represents the majority of those in the Bétharram victims’ collective.
In response to this gap, some claimants have sought support from the L'Institut Francophone pour la Justice et la Démocratie (IFJD), a Bayonne-based organisation specialising in transitional justice. The institute has developed expertise in reconciliation processes in armed conflicts before unexpectedly turning its attention to this issue, partly due to its presence in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département or county where the school is located.
Since an initial meeting on June 5th 2024, a team of IFJD legal experts has been working with congregation leaders to explore the possibility of a broader recognition of all victims, along with the structural, legal and financial consequences that such an approach would entail.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter