Overview

• Parliament’s 330-page report finds that physical and sexual abuse at Notre-Dame de Bétharram went unchecked while François Bayrou was education minister in the 1990s.
• Survivors recounted systematic beatings, rape and humiliation from 1957 to 2004, with many cases barred from prosecution by existing limitation periods.
• Only two of more than 200 legal complaints have led to charges, with a former supervisor held over assaults from 1991 to 1994 and 2004.
• The commission’s 50 recommendations include annual unannounced inspections of private schools, a national hotline for abuse reports and lifting confession secrecy for minors.
• Advocates and victims are pressing for the removal of time limits on child abuse claims and the establishment of a state compensation fund.