French Prime Minister François Bayrou insisted in parliament on Wednesday that he only learned of claims of sexual abuse at a Catholic school from media reports.
Bayrou told a parliamentary committee investigating widespread claims of abuse at a school in southwestern France that during his time as education minister between 1993 and 1997 he had "not received any information other than what was reported in the press".
Read moreBayrou and Bétharram: Did French PM lie? Did he cover up sex abuse?
Lawmakers at the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, grilled Bayrou on what he knew about allegations of physical and sexual abuse over five decades at the private Catholic school Notre-Dame de Bétharram, near the town of Pau in southwestern France.
Bayrou is a longtime and prominent elected official in that region and a number of his children attended the school. He has been the mayor of Pau since 2014 and continues to hold that office since becoming prime minister five months ago. He has been a member of parliament from that area for about 20 years and was the national education minister from 1993 to 1997.
Since February last year, over 200 complaints have been formally filed over alleged abuse at the school, including dozens of alleged rapes by priests, according to Alain Esquerre, the spokesperson for a group of victims.
The scandal took a political turn when Bayrou told the National Assembly in February that he had never been informed of abuse at the school until recent years. A few days later, he said he actually had been aware of “a slap” by a school supervisor in 1996 when he was education minister, leading him to commission a report.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)
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