Outreau case

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The Outreau case refers to a criminal case of pedophilia which took place between 1997 and 2000 in Outreau (a French commune) in northern France and a partial judicial error which led to provisional detentions between 2001 and 2004. Following alerts launched by social services within the Delay family, a long investigation seemed to reveal an extensive pedophile network: around forty adults had been accused and around fifty children were potentially victims. The trial took place in May–July 2004 before the Cour d'assises, a criminal trial court, of the commune Pas-de-Calais (Saint-Omer) where 12 children were recognised victims of rape, sexual assault, corruption of minors and pimping. 10 of the 17 accused adults were sentenced to prison. The appeal trial at the Paris Court of Appeal took place in November 2005, where six of the ten accused were acquitted; the other four had not appealed. The case thus resulted in four final convictions of the two couples, as well as the acquittal of thirteen of the seventeen accused (some of whom were parents of children recognised as victims), several of whom had been held in prison for one to three years. The acquitted received apologies from President Jacques Chirac and were compensated for their imprisonment. One of the accused, François Mourmand, who had been accused of having murdered a child, died after 17 months in pre-trial detention. A parliamentary commission of inquiry took place in 2005 to analyse the causes of the dysfunctions of justice in the case. The theme of the case, the high number of children recognized as victims, the potential murder of a child, as well as the number of adults indicted and kept in pre-trial detention made this case a national headline and gave rise to strong public criticism. The particularities of the trials of the...