In total, the Pau public prosecutor’s office now has 76 complaints denouncing serious acts of violence against students at the private establishment in Béarn, committed over several decades.
Initially, 20 complaints were filed last January. They targeted six priests and two lay people, incriminated by former students for acts of violence, sexual assault and rape, committed between 1970 and 1990 at Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram, a Catholic establishment in Béarn under contract, renamed today Beau Rameau ensemble.
In February, 13 new complaints were added to the file. And since Tuesday, April 23, there are 43 more. The Pau public prosecutor’s office now has 76 complaints on its desk. In all, more than 20 people are incriminated. A preliminary investigation was opened in early February. And other victims could be added to the pile, warns Alain Esquerre, also a former student of the establishment, who represents the victims’ collective.
More and more recent facts
The facts denounced, for the most part prescribed before these new complaints filed, now extend back to the 2000s, since among the youngest complainants, we find a 34-year-old man. Enough to encourage the authorities to push the investigations further, hopes Alain Esquerre, who regrets that “we continue to be told that these are old facts to justify not digging into these stories further”.
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“He kissed me by force and gave me oral sex…” The testimony of a former student of Notre-Dame de Bétharram college, in Béarn
Some testimonies are indeed chilling. Like that of Olivier (his first name has been changed), who described his traumas in the columns of Sud-Ouest last February. He notably recounts how, in the 1980s, a manager of his dormitory systematically summoned him to his room or to the infirmary during his punishment hours, during which he kissed the teenager and imposed fellatio on him.
The Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram college-high school was, according to the plaintiffs, known as the strictest establishment in the region. He is today the target of the worst denunciations.
