FRANCE: Fabrice Burgaud, the investigating magistrate at the origin of what president Jacques Chirac has called "an unprecedented judicial disaster" testified before a parliamentary commission of inquiry yesterday as France tries to understand how 12 innocent people were imprisoned for periods ranging from 16 to 39 months on false charges of paedophilia.
The country is so obsessed with "the Outreau affair" that six leading television stations broadcast the first two hours of Judge Burgaud's testimony live. The miscarriage of justice is sometimes compared to the Dreyfus Affair, the late 19th century scandal in which a Jewish officer was wrongly convicted of spying for Germany. The objective of the inquiry is to propose far-reaching reforms of the French justice system, to prevent such mistakes in the future.
Judge Burgaud was only 28- years-old and fresh out of magistrates' school when the case was entrusted to him in the northern French town of Outreau. Though 64 magistrates dealt with the case at one stage or another, as the initial judge in the case, Mr Burgaud bears the brunt of criticism.
Looking pale and drawn, speaking hesitantly, Mr Burgaud said he "could feel the suffering" of the 13 of 17 accused who were eventually acquitted. Six of the acquitted attended the hearing. Lydia Cazin-Mourmand held a framed photograph of her brother Francois who committed suicide in prison.
In his own defence, Mr Burgaud emphasised the "horrible," "abominable" and "terrifying" nature of the sexual torture recounted by children in Outreau. The children were raped daily over a five-year period.
"They used objects from daily life to sodomise them - forks, toys," Bourgaud said. "Group rapes were filmed . . . Medical exams showed bleeding from the anus and damage to the children's skulls". Two married couples are now serving 20-year prison sentences for abusing their own children. One of those convicted, Myriam Badawi Delay, is a mythomaniac who convinced Judge Burgaud that her neighbours in Outreau, as well as a priest and a notary, participated in a paedophilia ring.
Despite blatant inconsistencies and the denials of the accused, Mr Burgaud had them arrested. He placed a mentally and physically handicapped man under investigation, but dropped the charges when a doctor reported that the man was incapable of performing such acts.
"I believe I did my work honestly, without taking sides," Judge Burgaud told the commission of 30 deputies yesterday.