François Bayrou rejected accusations he coated up sexual abuse in a college his youngsters attended, stating he would sue the media outlet behind the story for defamation.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou has mentioned he plans to sue French outlet Mediapart for publishing an investigation which claims he lied to defend a priest accused of raping a scholar within the late Nineteen Nineties.
The alleged incident is alleged to have occurred at Notre-Dame de Bétharram faculty — situated close to Lourdes within the French Pyrénées-Atlantiques division — which is going through round 100 complaints of violence, sexual assault and rape.
The complaints relate to occasions which befell between the Seventies and Nineteen Nineties, with the Pau public prosecutor launching an investigation greater than a 12 months in the past.
Mediapart additionally reported that Bayrou’s personal youngsters attended Notre-Dame de Bétharram, and that his spouse taught catechism on the establishment.
Throughout inquiries to the federal government at France’s Nationwide Meeting on Tuesday, the prime minister informed MPs that “every thing is fake, and a defamation grievance shall be lodged”.
MP Paul Vannier of the far-left La France Insoumise requested Bayrou, “Why did not you defend the Notre-Dame de Bétharram pupils who had been victims of paedophile violence?”
“You have got all the time claimed that you simply knew nothing, noticed nothing and heard nothing,” he added. “The chronology reconstructed by Mediapart, Le Monde and the native press contradicts you totally.”
“I used to be by no means knowledgeable of this sexual violence,” replied the prime minister, who went on to deride the story as a part of a smear try.
“The tactic is now very well-known to the French. They’ve seen it time and time once more: as quickly as somebody is able of duty, scandals are invented.“
Bayrou mentioned that the primary grievance towards Notre-Dame de Bétharram was lodged a number of months after he left his place as minister of schooling, which he held from 1993-1997.
Nonetheless, Mediapart reported that complaints of bodily violence dedicated by a supervisor on the faculty had been actually lodged in 1996, when Bayrou was nonetheless in authorities.
Final March, Bayrou informed French newspaper Le Parisien that “hearsay had it that, 25 years in the past, there had been slaps at boarding faculty”, however maintained that he had “by no means heard (…) of any sexual dangers.”
