The Outreau Affair: A New Netflix Docuseries Unveils a Multiple Child Abuse Conspiracy and Judicial Scandal in France

Considered one of the biggest judicial scandals in France, The Outreau case: a French nightmareone of the most recent versions of Netflixrevives a story that has been going on for two decades.

Known as the Outreau case, a town in Boulogne Sur Mer in northern France brought together the report of almost two dozen minors, of which 12 were recognized in the first degree as victims of rape, sexual violence, corruption of minors and exploitation of prostitution.

The minors denounced their relatives (some of whom were children of people acquitted in the second degree) at the end of the 1990s.

The case ended with four final convictions and the acquittal of 13 of the 17 defendantsmany of whom had been in prison for several years.

How the nightmare began

The children of Myriam Badaoui and Thierry Delay are the first to report their parents. It all stems from a series of reports from the area’s Territorial Social Action Unit made between 1995 and 2000, when the children were finally relocated to foster families. The details at the time spoke of “serious disorders” and extreme fear towards his father.

Their testimonies were joined by other minors who claimed to have suffered similar abuse, which is why the investigations ascertained that it is a pedophile prostitution network, with the Delay family at the centre.

Cross-referenced versions of 17 accused, the alleged murder of a girl whose body has not yet been founda trial that put minors on the witness stand before the public, defended only by two public defenders, even exposing them to questioning by defense lawyers… A set of situations that not even the best fiction could imagine.

During the trial, the mother of the Ritardi children, after promptly recalling all the facts and the intervention of the defendants, declared that she had made everything up, but then recanted. Her husband watched the trial the entire time covering his face with both hands.

Four of the defendants, including the Delay couple, have pleaded guilty. The little ones were surprisingly judged in their versions on a par with the adults. The verdict put 10 adults in prison in total. A year later the appeal trial was held in Paris, where the victims were again harassed.

For the defense, including Éric Dupont Moretti, now France’s Minister of Justice, the children were manipulated and lied to. The appeal sentence maintained the prison for those who confessed and freed the others, who They received an apology from then French President Jacques Chirac and compensation of between 300,000 and one million euros.. The minors received compensation of around 30 thousand euros. Two of those acquitted were convicted years later of abusing their daughter.

Exclusively: the testimony of the psychologist who interviewed the boys

Marie Christine Gryson Dejehansart is a clinical psychologist, forensic expert, trainer and author of Outreau, the other truth, 12 children recognized as victims, a book that will have its new version next month. He was responsible for interviewing 15 minors. Of them, 12 took part in the trials.

“Psychological competence takes into account the results established by experience and research based on a large number of proven cases, studied for approximately thirty years”, he explains in an exclusive dialogue with Clarion.

“When the expert examines an alleged minor victim, he conducts an interview with a neutral attitude, where the questions asked must be open-ended so as not to induce the answers because the child is suggestible. The minor victim is usually overwhelmed by a feeling of unreality with a dissociative effect. If we jump into this gap and suggest, through doubt or intimidation, that he is lying or inventing, the child withdraws because He especially wishes he had done something wrong, rather than believe that those who were supposed to protect him attacked him.. The child’s memory, like his brain, is under construction. The memory of events can evolve and is always metabolized in the direction of minimization.”

-What was the effect of exposing minors to their alleged attackers?

-They faced a surreal and unlikely interrogation by defense lawyers. His double status as a child and a victim was completely forgotten.. It is necessary to urgently review the situation before justice during the hearings of the minor allegedly victim of sexual violence, including rape, in terms of psychological integrity. In fact, the moment she has to be physically present there, she suffers a new trauma of great magnitude.

By force of circumstances, the criminal case catapults the child into a terrifying universe in which most of the rules are normally established for adults who are to be tried for crimes. The climax was reached during the sordid Outreau trials, which will serve as a red line for this analysis. I was one of the 7 experts present on the 12 children recognized as victims of rape, sexual violence, corruption. of minors and exploitation of prostitution.

The rape of rape

Now of age Chérif Delay, one of the child victims, in his work I’m standing, he indicated “After my testimony, the word belongs to the defense! The balance of power was clearly against us. We children were represented by only two lawyers. There were more than ten in front, I counted nineteen in total, taking turns against us. And some were believed to be pit bulls. They were scary, even before they opened their mouths. Even legal professionals were afraid of it. While I was on the stand, some of these lawyers tried to kill me, cutting my throat like a pig.”

During the appeal trial in Paris, the attorney general asked the same victim if he too had been raped by aliens. In an equally shocking report, it was his younger brother who was questioned by one of the six defense lawyers of the defendant being tried at the Rennes court if he too had been raped by a giraffe.

“The lawyer Hubert Delarue goes further – continues the psychologist -, as we see in the Netflix series, as he specifies that he asked a child who had denounced zoophilic practices often found in images of child pornography, if he had been raped ‘by a goat, a horse, his cat, his dog.'”

And he continues: “This mockery sets the tone for the lack of respect on the part of the defense towards the children, terrified by their guilty situation before the court. The defense lawyer Philippe Lescène, for his part, dares to extract a drawing from an expert opinion to “cast doubt on a girl’s statements. Since the minor is a virgin, the drawing showing the sexual abuse is discredited by the lawyer and, consequently, by the work of the expert who validated it.”

-Do you think that the vision presented in the documentary is partial?

-Completely. I stated this during the trial Sodomy and Fellatio are violations that leave no traces. The series cut my explanatory testimony. I couldn’t defend the child or my job. Which is deeply shocking, because the harm that comes with it is calling into question the words of child victims.

Experts, including Gryson, examined all the victims, sometimes twice. The children were then re-examined during the appeal process by 5 new experts, who confirmed the findings.

“The cross-examination of defense lawyers imposes the assumption of equality of intellectual weapons”, explains the specialist. However, these are not only adults, but also rhetoricians whose goal is to discredit the victim’s testimony in order to defend their client. We must remember the evidence and common sense that emerged from the judicial hearings: for the child the adult is the one who knows and his questions are interpreted as the reference to the reality to which he sometimes wishes to adhere in order to free himself from his shameful condition as a child sexually assaulted. All these facts of childhood victimology are taken into consideration from the beginning, but are forgotten at the most decisive moment, that is, during the final judgement.”

-Are these types of judicial presentations still allowed in France?

Unfortunately, Outreau jurisprudence allowed the interrogations, even if recognized as “vigorous” by defense lawyers, to be considered welcome in terms of revealing the truth.

It is necessary to warn about the existence of unacceptable mistreatment of child victims, associated with a denial of reality in an inadequate judicial context, and which could be repeated tomorrow in the current state of affairs. This progress is clearly a question of political will and it is hoped that it continues in the next government and the next legislature, so that France’s delay, often denounced by the UN in terms of respect for children’s rights, is no longer lasting. standing. on the agenda with the same frequency.

Outreau’s case led to the creation of a parliamentary commission to analyze judicial procedures. He has not yet completed his task.