The latest hearings of the French parliamentary commission of inquiry into violence and state controls in schools "contradict" the statements of Prime Minister Francois Bayrou on his knowledge of the alleged violence and sexual assaults at the Notre-Dame de Betharram school near the southwestern town of Pau. Claims of repeated sexual and physical violence at the boarding school have cast a shadow over the premiership of Bayrou, who has been accused of knowing about some of the accusations as early as the 1990s when he was education minister and as a local official but not acting on them. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES