00:00French Prime Minister François Bayrou faced one of his most politically sensitive moments yet on Wednesday evening,
00:08testifying under oath before a parliamentary committee examining what he knew or didn't know about decades of abuse at a Catholic school in southwestern France.
00:20The committee is investigating Bayrou's potential knowledge of allegations at the Notre-Dame-de-Betarram school where 200 complaints of sexual and physical abuse have been filed since February last year.
00:36Bayrou swore that he knew nothing about the violence and even denounced the political instrumentalization of the affair.
00:44He also claimed to have learned of the allegations through the press and denied ever having any sort of insider information.
00:54Despite it being a very personal issue for the Prime Minister, this Catholic school is the same school where his wife once taught and that his children also attended years ago.
01:05The political bombshell dropped earlier this year after media reports suggested that Bayrou may have known about the abuse as early as the 1990s
01:16and tried to cover it up back when he was the French Minister of Education.
01:22Another major turning point of the scandal, last month his own daughter came out and said that she was beaten by a priest from that same school when she was 14 years old.
01:34She said that she never told her father about the abuse.
01:39And while Bayrou may have survived multiple no-confidence votes and a fractured parliament since his appointment last December,
01:49the Notre-Dame-de-Betarram affair may prove to be harder to outrun.
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