A political storm over allegations of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at a Catholic school near François Bayrou’s hometown has taken a personal turn for the prime minister after his daughter revealed that she had been a victim of physical violence at the institution, reports Politico.
Hélène Perlant, the eldest of Bayrou’s six children, told the French weekly Paris Match that she was among the hundreds of victims who have come forward to share stories of abuse at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school. Several former students — including one who has pressed charges — alleged that Bayrou knew about the abuse at the school yet failed to act, igniting a scandal that has threatened his premiership.
erlant said in 1987, she was “grabbed by the hair, dragged along the ground for several meters, and pummeled and kicked all over [her] body, especially in the stomach” by a priest working at Bétharram, which she attended along with some of Bayrou’s other children and where her mother taught religious education. The acts of violence, she said, left her “full of bruises” and with “severe tinnitus.”
Two people close to Bayrou, who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, described the prime minister as being in a state of “intense emotion” and “shock” after learning about the incident. Perlant, now 53, did not tell her father about the abuse until shortly before the Paris Match story was published, according to one of them.