After the revelations of sexual abuses, the protection issue

Their memories are appalling, but they will no longer remain confined between the walls of an austere boarding school. More than 150 former students filed a complaint against the College-Lycée Catholique Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, for violence and sexual abuses committed between 1957 and 2009.

In this boarding school renowned for its rigor, supervisors and teachers – priests or lay people – would have inflicted on children blows, humiliations, sexual assault and rape. The case caused a shock in opinion, especially since the Prime Minister, François Bayrou, elected in the department and Minister of National Education at the time of the events, is accused of having ignored the alerts.

This Tuesday, March 4, the religious congregation of the Fathers of Betharram, which has long directed the school, has come out of several weeks of silence. With AFP, she recognized her “responsibility” in the violence committed within the boarding school, and announced the creation of an independent commission of inquiry. Funded by the congregation, the commission must shed light on the “causes” of these “massive abuses”, by studying the archives and listening to the victims and members of the congregation. It must also make it possible to set up tools in countries where the congregation has establishments, to prevent new drifts.

In echo, new accusations of violence are aimed at other school institutions, such as Notre-Dame-de-Garangoie (Hautes-Pyrénées), or Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Coeur (which has become Saint-Jacques-de-Compostela in 2003) in the Landes.

Not enough establishments

These painful revelations have revived the debate on the control of Catholic establishments under contract. In June 2023, the Court of Auditors deplored the lack of surveillance in private school groups. Because these establishments – mostly Catholic – benefit from the Debré law.

According to this regime, schools sign an association contract with the State and follow the school programs of national education in exchange for public funding. The state leads inspections to verify the conformity of the teaching. But establishments have great autonomy in their internal management, such as the recruitment of supervisors, the organization of buildings and leisure times.

“Some educational institutions have completely misguided their mission”

Due to this autonomy, national education controls are less frequent and in -depth than elsewhere. “In the public, the surveys so -called 360 degrees, for a complete diagnosis of dysfunctions, can be more easily carried out,” explains Frank Burbage, Inspector General of National Education and member of the CIIVISE (independent commission on incest and sexual violence against children).

In the middle of the Betharram case, this imbalance did not fail to react the Minister of Education. At the end of February, Élisabeth Borne announced that 40 % of private establishments under contract would be the subject of an inspection in the next two years.

Controls to which Catholic education is declared very favorable. “These inspections are welcome, if they can contradict those who discredit us,” supports Philippe Delorme, secretary general of Catholic education. The Bétharram affair shows that certain school institutions have completely unscrewed their mission. On the contrary, our whole project is to help students flourish in a safe setting. »»

A program to protect fragile public

In fact, the functioning of Catholic education is now better structured. The bishops of France adopted, in 1992, then in 2013, new statutes to strengthen the supervision of dioceses and formalize the function of diocesan director. “They are the ones who are visiting supervision in establishments,” says Pierre-Louis Deulofeu, director of the school group and the boarding school Jean Paul II, in Compiègne. They ensure that everything is going well in the recruitment of staff, or in the management of boarding schools. »»

Since 2016, Catholic education has also deployed a program to protect fragile audiences. The objective: to educate educational staff about the risks of abuse, with internal training. A precursor tool, established a few years before the creation of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), which published in 2021 a report showing that 30 % of the sexual abuses committed by clerics since the 1950s had been in Catholic establishments.

It is difficult to break the silence

“The devices exist, but the most difficult is to activate them,” says Frank Burbage. Victims have a lot of trouble speaking because their attackers are most often relatives to whom they have confidence and admiration. However, according to the Inspector General of National Education, Catholic establishments valued and cultivate a family and united dimension.

The community is so united that it can become difficult to break the silence. But the lines are already starting to move. The emotional, relational and sexual life education program (Evars) will be generalized at the start of the 2025 school year in all establishments, private or not. It was adopted by Catholic education and the parents of students after several reshuffles and will in particular integrate the learning of consent from primary school. An essential step so that such dramas belong to the past.