L'Affaire d'Outreau (2023)

On December 1, 2005, the Paris Court of Appeal acquitted the last defendants in the "Outreau" case: it took four years of proceedings, and two trials to reach this conclusion. A total of 12 children are recognized as victims of sexual assault, 4 people found guilty and 13 people cleared after 3 years in prison. This series of 4 episodes looks back on this incredible judicial fiasco which led to the setting-up of a parliamentary commission of inquiry in January 2006 and continues to haunt French collective memory through a combination of reconstructions of the interrogations filmed in a huge 1000m2 studio with newly filmed testimonies of the main protagonists. The protagonists thus meet face-to-face the actors portraying them in the same studio to give a better understanding of how the judicial investigation of Judge Burgaud created a madly spinning wheel that nothing and no one knew how to stop and which crushed the lives of child victims and innocent defendants. Four of the cleared defendants as well as one of the twelve recognized child victims and François-Xavier Marecaux take us back in time - together with the actors who play their part - and explain the nightmare they experienced because they had been unable to find anyone who listened to them, neither in the judicial and police institutions nor in the media. Their words were never truly heard. It all started on December 5, 2000 when the children of Myriam Badaoui and Thierry Delay accused their parents of having sexually abused them.