French PM faces scrutiny over sexual abuse claims at Catholic school

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou on Wednesday battled to contain a new controversy after lawmakers urged him to explain whether he was aware of widespread claims of sexual abuse of minors at a Catholic school. Prosecutors in France have been investigating around a hundred complaints concerning alleged violence, sexual assault and rape committed at the Notre-Dame de Betharram school, which Bayrou’s own children attended, in the country’s southwest between the 1970s and 1990s.