French Prime Minister Fran?ois Bayrou has been engulfed in a widening scandal over physical violence and sexual abuse allegedly committed over decades at a Catholic school in his home region in the Pyrenees.
The crisis has been brewing for weeks, after more than 200 of now adult victims came forward to speak about the psychological terror, beatings and rapes allegedly inflicted on them by priests and teachers at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school from the 1950s to the 2000s.
Some have accused the prime minister of knowing about the problems since he was a prominent local politician at the time and later education minister. Bayrou has denied knowledge of the abuses.