The daughter of the French prime minister caused shock by revealing that she was a victim of abuse in her adolescence

Sexual abuses and beatings To the students in the prestigious private school Notre Dame de Bétharram, in the Atlantic Pyrenees, moved France. The then mayor of Pau and today Prime Minister François Bayrou would have protected some of the abusers, according to testimonies before justice. His children were students and his wife Babeth, had been a teacher at the establishment.

What he never imagined until today is that his daughter Hélene, who was then 14 years old, I had kept the secret of the abuses received for 30 years. Now he denounced them, at 53, in an interview in the magazine Paris Matchwith his father as France Premier.

“I was silent for thirty years,” helene admitted, one of the six children of the Prime Minister of France, on the case of the Bétharram school.

Agnès, Calixte, Marie, André, Dominique and Hélène are the six children of Bayrou, which has 21 grandchildren. While the politician fulfilled his functions, the woman affectionately adored by the Paunidens, Babeth, put aside her teaching career at the Bétharram school to devote themselves to educating them.

In an interview published Wednesday by Paris-Matchthe daughter of the prime minister, Hélène Perlant, tells having been Victim of violence in a summer camp, Organized by the same congregation as the Bétharram Catholic School.

Helene Perlant participated as a victim in the book of Testimonials “Le silence of Bétharram”, where Alain Esquerre, former student of the Private Notre-Dame Catholic College of Bétharram, has spoken with those who suffered, mentioned to his perpetrators and reported the horrendous abuses committed there.

“Those two had me in the sights! I had something sadistic, very malicious, a true villain, who wanted revenge. He had already told me: ‘You, daughter of Bayrou, insolent as your father! He dragged me on the ground for several meters and struck me and kicked all over my body, especially in the stomach. It weighed around 120 kilos. To put it without surroundings, I urinated on top and stayed there all night, wet and prostrated in my sleeping bag. Alain tells it, ”says Hélene in Paris Match.

“Obviously, one might think that he had all the information. But he, like the other parents, was very, very politically involved, at the local level. I was even more. But I put it at the same level as all the parents. The more involved you are, the less you see, the less you understand,” explained Bayrou’s daughter.

The Prime Minister, denounced for omission of complaintmust appear under oath before the National Assembly on May 14. François Bayrou will be questioned by the Investigation Commission of the National Assembly on School Violence, created following this case.

Although François Bayrou, former Minister of Education and Mayor of Pau, is accused of covering up this matterHélène Perlant explains that he never talked about the violence he suffered at home or with his parents.

“I was silent for thirty years. Apart from that, not a single allusion to anyone. Maybe I wanted to protect my father, unconsciously, I believe, from the political blows I received at the local level. And he received them! The violence was always present, even during his first mandates,” Helene said.

“Le Canard Enchaîné He contacted (Prime Minister) a month ago to comment, I suppose, about the publication of ‘The silence of Betharram’, in which they told him that I was involved, ”said the premier’s daughter.

“He called me: ‘Is that true?’, He asks me. We laugh and he continues: ‘What do you say? What do you think? I have a little fear! Are you denouncing me?’ You’ll see! ‘I replied. He does not know that I am a victim and does not know that I will testify as a victim, “his daughter told Paris Match.

In 2023, Alain Esquerre created a Facebook group to try to identify and group victims of physical violence within the school group.

Left He quickly received complaints from physical violence, but also of sexual violence, aggressions and violations. He then decided to help the victims collecting complaints, which he periodically presented to the Pau Prosecutor’s Office.

As they approached those who kept this secret buried inside, Alain Esquerre becomes the spokesman of Bétharram’s notre-Dame.

On February 15, 2025, in front of the City Council of Pau, after a meeting with Prime Minister François Bayrou, Minister of National Education from 1993 to 1997, when the matter became public, and president of the General Council of the Atlantic Pyrenees from 1992 to 2001, Alain Esquerre cited him as a witness.

“I think right now in all those blows. In those repeated humiliations on the stairs where we expected, with a full stomach and the nose against the wall, the brutal beating that came, and in all those sexual aggressions. Lord prime minister, understand how much it hurts each of us to find us here to denounce the omertá, the tacit, the hypocrisy of a system that has crushed us,” he said.

So far, Alain Esquerre has collected More than 180 complaints In this case, in which He accuses secular and religious personalities of alleged violence, between 1950 and 2010.

“My heart stabs me.” François Bayrou on Wednesday reacted to his daughter’s testimony about violence in Bétharram.

The Prime Minister’s environment assured that François Bayrou’s daughter, a practicing Catholic, had not told her that she had been a victim of physical violence during a summer camp, organized by the same congregation to which Notre-Dame de Bétharram belongs.

Hélène Perland believes that “maybe I wanted to protect it, unconsciously.”

“As a father, this hurts deeply, despite being a very old case. We did not know anything about it and that such abuses were committed, I find it almost unbearable. But as a public official, who goes beyond being a family father, I think of the victims,” ​​said the premier.

The prime minister also said that his daughter, with whom she communicates “very often”, “has never spoken” about these acts of violence.

François Bayrou’s surroundings said he was “stunned and shocked” for his daughter’s testimony.

“We knew that her daughter had participated in this book. But she never told her that she had been a victim of violence. He learned yesterday,” said the Prime Minister’s environment.

“Maybe I wanted to protect my father, unconsciously, I think, from the political blows I was receiving at the local level,” he said. For her, “the question is of individual and collective denial, not lies.”

In his book, which will be published on Thursday, Alain Esquerre describes in detail the violence, including sexual violence, suffered by young students in Bétharram, and their efforts to discover the truth. For several weeks, many students have been testifying about the physical and sexual violence They suffered in the establishment. According to the Association of Victims, 200 complaints have been filed, but they all seem to have prescribed, according to Alain Esquerre.

“We are waiting on May 14 and we yearn for it. The most important thing is that this investigation commission is opened, for the victims and for shame to lean,” added the premier environment.

Earlier this month, Alain Hontangs, a former police officer in charge of investigating the first complaint of rape against a cleric in a Catholic school in Béarn, told the commission that a magistrate had informed him about the participation of François Bayrou in the postponement of the case trial.

Judge Christian Mirande said he had “any memory” of having talked about an intervention by François Bayrou, his neighbor. Without doubting, however, the statements of the two former researchers, in whom “still has full confidence.”

François Bayrou, mayor of Pau and former deputy and president of the Departmental Council of the Atlantic Pyrenees, denies more generally to have had knowledge in the past of the physical and sexual aggressions denounced today by 200 alumni of the establishment. He also declared on April 11 that “never, not once in his life and in his political life he intervened in a judicial case.”

Notre-Dame de Bétharram was founded in the Atlantic Pyrenees in the nineteenth century, in the municipality of Lestelle-Bétharram by the congregation of priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Jesus of Bétharram.

The institution has always enjoyed great prestige. In the 1980s, around 600 students studied, from 4th to 12th year.

Alain Bourrillon, professor of French and Latin for 18 years at Bétharram Notre-Dame, recalls a «climate of generalized violence, a pressure system and the control that some people exerted on students, especially some supervisors. There was violence everywhere, humiliations. The students were scolded, slapped ».

Children also talk about timed showers, monumental slapped that pierce the eardrums and the dreaded punishment on the porch. It is a punishment that all Betharram students know. Then fellatio to priests of 9 -year -old boys, admitted to school.

In “Le Silence de Bétharram,” Hélene says that Father Lartiguet, who died in 2000, when she was only 14 years old, gave her “punches and kicks throughout the body.” But, due to a system that encourages silence, no one has denounced this scene, which was almost routine in this environment. ”