PARIS — French Prime Minister François Bayrou said he plans to sue investigative media outlet Mediapart after it reported that he “lied” to defend a Catholic school where a priest had been accused of raping a student in the late 1990s.
Mediapart last week published witness statements and documents that purported to show that Bayrou “could not have been unaware of the accusations” at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school, which his own children attended.
Addressing lawmakers’ questions in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Bayrou shot back at the allegations.
“I assure you that I have never been informed of any incidents of violence, let alone sexual violence,” Bayrou said. “A libel suit will obviously be filed.”
Representatives for the French prime minister and Mediapart did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
Bayrou, a former education minister, had previously said he had heard “rumors” of “slaps” but not sexual abuse at the school, French daily Le Parisien reported last year.
In 1998, the school’s former director, a priest, was put under formal investigation in a probe into the alleged rape of a student. A second complaint was later filed. Mediapart’s story quoted the first plaintiff’s lawyer and a reporter who worked on the case who both said that Bayrou had been aware of the allegations.
Mediapart pointed to reports from Le Monde and local newspaper La République des Pyrénées, both of which reported that case’s investigative judge, Christian Mirande, said he had met with Bayrou early on during the investigations. Dozens of former students have since pressed charges about incidents of sexual assault which allegedly took place at the school.
The piece also claimed that Bayrou’s wife attended the funeral ceremony of the accused, who committed suicide a few weeks after the launch of the probe.
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