Boris Fauche was “stirred” when the Notre-Dame de Bétharram file came to light at the beginning of the year. A student from 1987 to 1991, between the ages of 13 and 16, at the Catholic institution located near Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), he was a victim, like dozens of others, of physical and psychological violence inflicted by part of the supervisors and the teaching staff, secular and religious, between the 1970s and 1990s.
The one who will celebrate his 50th birthday this year has joined the Facebook group of former students created by Alain Esquerre, another victim of the institution, and at the origin of the “Bétharram affair. » “I was horrified by what I read there,” says Boris Fauche, who received 20 minutes in his apartment in Chartrons, in Bordeaux. “Suddenly, a lot of things came to the surface, but on the other hand I also realized that I was not alone in having experienced this. At the time, everyone was left alone with their suffering. We didn’t talk to each other. »
Victim of a pedophilia network before entering Betharram
Boris Fauche wondered if he would go “to the end of the thing”, and in particular as far as “filing a complaint” like other members of the group. “It meant diving back into this era which was painful enough as it is,” he continues. Finally, I understood that I had the resources to confront it, despite the stigma that remained deep within me. I said to myself that this could help to free the speech of certain victims, particularly those for whom the facts are not prescribed, which would make it possible to punish the facts denounced, and the actors of these atrocities who have worked with complete impunity until in the late 1990s.
But it is not with joy of heart that he agrees to plunge back into this period of the 1980s, to tell his own story in Bétharram. He lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag. Then launches. “I live in a particular context at this time, with the separation of my parents which is not going well, a mother who works a lot and who does not have time to take care of me. I’m at college, things are going badly, I’m meeting bad people…” He runs his hand over his face. “I then found myself the victim of a pedophilia network, which was dismantled, which led me to testify before the police, at the age of 12. »
Boris’s mother had “already planned” for him to join Bétharram, an institution whose harsh educational method allowed him to obtain “exceptional” success rates in the baccalaureate, and which had the reputation of putting students in difficulty again. In the right way. » “Faced with the urgency of my situation, my mother wants to speed up the process. We went there, and we begged the director, Father Carricart, to accept me [mis en examen en 1998 pour viol et tentative de viol, après les accusations d’un jeune homme de la région bordelaise, Pierre Silviet-Carricart s’est suicidé en 2000]. This is how I returned to Bétharram in the middle of my 5th year. »
First day, “all the kids arrive at the dormitory crying”
Boris Fauche will never forget his first day there, “that famous September 13, 1987”. “It was a Sunday evening, returning from the Easter holidays. I see all the kids arriving at the dormitory crying. Everyone is on the defensive. In the space of half an hour, I understand that I am in another world. » That of “rigor and silence, hands behind your back”. “The slightest behavior deemed inappropriate – a wink, a smile – was violence, punishment, humiliation. »
The child who is not yet 13 years old pays the price “from the first evening”. “At boarding school, I try to talk to my neighbor. He does not answer me. And then I hear the pawn snapping its fingers. We operated at the snap of the supervisors’ fingers. He ends up coming to see me, and pulls me out of bed by my hair. But that was still okay. » The situation will continue to get worse, especially during supervised study time, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. “A noise, and the sanction fell, often with nameless sadism. I particularly remember a right I took for accidentally slamming my desk. I never took a slap of such violence again. I was abused by the pawns, by the teachers. I got my face kicked in by my music teacher, who managed at that moment to disgust me, even though I adore music. »
One timed shower per week
There is also this famous staircase, on the banks of the Gave de Pau, where students were sent when they were punished, sometimes in the cold, under the gaze of the Virgin Mary. “You had to stand there with your hands behind your back, in full view of everyone, without moving, waddling, or wavering. And if the general supervisor ever came by at that time, we could be punished a second time. He was known to turn over his signet ring before striking. And when we went to his office, we really relaxed. »
Boris Fauche was also marked by “unsanitary conditions”. “We had six, seven squat toilets at the back of the yard, without flushing. In short, it was disgusting all the time. So much so that I could go the week without going. I thought I was the only one in this situation, but in the testimonies that I can read today, I realize that many of us were holding back. Besides that, we only had one shower a week, and they were timed. We couldn’t regulate the hot water. And this shower could be taken away for next to nothing. »
“I escaped the worst on my 13th birthday”
There remains the case of sexual violence, which today represents half of the complaints in this case. “In Bétharram, I escaped it, but only narrowly,” said the Bordeaux resident. “At the start of the 1987 school year, on my 13th birthday, I was called by the father director to his office,” he remembers. He welcomes me jovially and… he makes me come onto his knees. He starts making inappropriate gestures, caressing me, kissing me… I don’t remember how I did it, but I got out of the situation. What is really sordid about this is that it was to him that my mother and I told how I was abused by adults, this trauma that made me come to this establishment . And this man was going to make me relive the same thing. I escaped the worst that day. »
Boris Fauche stayed “three years and a quarter” in Bétharram. Before heading off in the direction of a BEP in Sales, which will prevent him from having to go to high school within the institution. “I felt very alone at that moment, with the feeling of being in prison,” he recalls. Anxieties followed me for a long time, and I ended up having a big depression in 2010. I was hospitalized, I followed therapy. In the second session, I mentioned the word Betharram, and it turns out that my therapist had already treated former students of the institution. I then did work that serves me a lot today. I realized that it had had a lot more impact on my life than I thought. This is also the gravity of what we were put through, in the name of a so-called educational method, which ultimately broke a lot of kids. It was just sadistic what we experienced. »
76 complaints, including 38 for acts of a sexual nature
Without this therapy, “I would not have understood the media coverage of the affair in the same way,” he believes. “I worked on anger to forgive. Today I am at peace. » Does he blame his mother for sending him there? “My mother wanted to help me, I put myself in her place, I can’t blame her. » To his attackers? “The only question that animates me is how can we move away so much from the religious values that they were supposed to convey? I even manage to say to myself that it must be terrible for them not to be able to control these impulses that they had. »
After an hour of discussion, Boris Fauche ends the interview empty. He ends his story, saying he hopes that his testimony can loosen tongues, and why not “awaken other institutions in which there could have been similar problems, because it is recurring”.
To date, the Pau public prosecutor’s office, which opened a preliminary investigation for “violence, rape and aggravated sexual assault”, has received 76 complaints, including 38 for acts of a sexual nature, occurring between the 1970s and the end of the 1970s. 1990. Some 21 adults, including nine religious people, are now incriminated.