The presence of François Bayrou among the former parents of Betharram students but also former Minister of National Education had fed the explosive nature of this extraordinary case. The minister’s hearing by the commission of inquiry, whose report will be made public this morning and which “Sud Ouest” consulted, had taken place under very high tension.
The “denial of violence”
By declaring on February 11, 2025 before the National Assembly “I have never heard of violence, or a fortiori sexual violence. Never “, the Prime Minister had launched a vast controversy as this assertion seemed little credible. “François Bayrou demonstrated twenty-nine years later the same denial of the violence inflicted on the students of the establishment of Béarn” write the two rapporteurs echoing the words made by the Minister of Education in 1996 when he affirmed that “all the information that the Minister could request, he asked for” and that “all checks were favorable and positive”.
Before the Commission, François Bayrou had finally conceded that he had been informed in the 1990s “by the press” of violence committed in Betharram. Adopted by the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Education without any voting “against” (but with some abstentions), the report is however isolates the position of the rapporteur Paul Vannier, who considers that the Prime Minister “lied” before the national representation. The deputy LFI considers that knowledge of violence is established not only by the inspection report that the Minister of National Education had requested in 1996 which documents the torture of the “Perron” suffered by a pupil but also by the meeting between the Minister and the investigating judge Christian Mirande in 1998, while the magistrate had just placed the former father director of the establishment, Pierre Carricart.
“In the absence of action, violence has persisted”
But the two rapporteurs associate themselves to formulate this heavy observation: “In the absence of action that the former Minister of National Education and President of the General Council, then informed, had the means to engage, these physical and sexual violence on the students of Betharram have continued for years, as evidenced by the many complaints filed by former students for facts after the 1990s.”
As for the president of the commission, the deputy PS Fattiha Keloua-Hachi, she tackles in the introduction of the report, the remarks formulated by François Bayrou during his hearing where he had accused the whistleblower and former teacher of Betharram Françoise Gullung of having “fabricated”. “It is sad to note that today, in 2025, the relentlessness that it lived during the denunciation of these atrocities is still legitimized by some and, among them, François Bayrou during his hearing within the framework of our investigative work,” writes the president. Before concluding: “The use of the sexist prejudice of the hysterical woman with the sole purpose of discrediting the word of a woman is unbearable and particularly unacceptable on the part of the Prime Minister of our country. »»
