Betharram: Bayrou promises to make public all documents produced at his hearing

François Bayrou promised on Tuesday, May 20, to make public all the documents he produced before the commission of inquiry into physical and sexual violence against children, born out of the Bétharram scandal, to show that the accusations against him "are scandalously inaccurate."

"To put an end to this controversy, I intend, within 48 hours, to put online all the documents (...) which will show that these accusations are scandalously inaccurate and which, I hope, will allow all those who are interested to form an honest opinion," the Prime Minister stated before the National Assembly, during the session of questions to the government.

He was responding to France Insoumise MP Sarah Legrain, who questioned him about a document from the Bétharram middle school and high school according to which a supervisor convicted of violence against a student in 1996 was still part of the establishment in 1997-1998, contradicting a letter from the director at the time, quoted by François Bayrou during his hearing, asserting that he had been dismissed.

The Prime Minister was keen to quote again on Tuesday this letter, dated 5 November 1996, in which the then director of Bétharram told the inspector: "I have just dismissed, even if this risks having repercussions, the supervisor with a 'certain concept of discipline'."

In this case, which has been sticking to his skin for several months, François Bayrou, who educated several of his children in this Catholic establishment in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, is notably accused by the left of having been aware in the past of the actions denounced today, and of having intervened in a legal case involving a religious man from Bétharram accused of rape.

The Prime Minister has firmly denied this on several occasions, again denouncing it on May 14 as a political "instrumentalization."

On Tuesday, he said that LFI had "diverted" the commission of inquiry "from its purpose and its subject" , and again accused a key witness in the Bétharram affair, Françoise Gullung, of "fabrication" , while the latter, a former teacher at Bétharram, considers that it is the Prime Minister who is "mistaken" .

"I know that this bothers you," added François Bayrou on this subject in the hubbub, while the LFI deputy Ségolène Amiot called him a "liar" .