Former students of Notre-Dame de Bétharram, in Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), took legal action on January 31 to denounce years of bullying and sexual violence. But, in 1998, the institution had already been shaken by a major scandal, when the former director of the premises, Father Carricart, was indicted for rape and imprisoned.
The clergyman was accused by a former student for acts committed ten years earlier. It was at the time of his arrest for a sexual exhibition that the young man freed himself from this weight. The first attack of which he said he was the victim occurred on the day of his father's funeral. “Father Carricart denied the facts, but there were enough elements to implicate him,” remembers Christian Mirande, who investigated the case when he was an investigating judge in Pau.
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