This Tuesday, January 17, France 2 is broadcasting an exceptional documentary on the Outreau affair. The opportunity to return to the role of judge Fabrice Burgaud, the first to investigate this pedophilia case.
It is one of the best-known court cases in France. In 2000, the children of Myriam Badaoui and Thierry Delay, a couple from Outreau, were placed in foster families at the request of their mother, because of parental violence. The four boys accused their parents of rape and other people. A total of 18 adults were arrested, including a bailiff, a taxi driver, an abbot, Myriam Badaoui as well as family neighbors. After a lengthy trial, seventeen people appeared before the Assize Court of Saint-Omer in May 2004. Among them, seven were acquitted, ten were convicted and twelve children were recognized as victims. In 2005, six adults appealed and were acquitted before Jacques Chirac mentioned “an unprecedented legal disaster”.
Key figure in the Outreau Affair, the examining magistrate, Fabrice Burgaud. At the time, he was freshly graduated and had just been appointed to Boulogne-sur-Mer. If it was he who started the investigation of this file, he was quickly transferred to Paris. In 2002, Fabrice Burgaud arrived in the anti-terrorist section and then in the sentence enforcement section. On February 8, 2006, he was heard by parliamentarians to review his actions as an investigating judge during the Outreau affair. “Today, perhaps more than any other, I can feel their pain, picture to myself what they went through, the confinement, the separation from loved ones, their questioned honestyhe said during this one, which lasted very long hours. I am entirely responsible for my instruction and I do not wish to evade my responsibility.”
Judge Fabrice Burgaud is “a little hidden”
On April 24, 2009, the Superior Council of the Judiciary imposed a “reprimand with entry in the file” on Fabrice Burgaud. Since then, he has continued his career as a magistrate and has worked, since 2017, at the Court of Cassation as a referendum general advocate. “It is not a promotion, we were wrong to write it. His name remains and will remain forever attached to this Outreau affair. It is a bit hidden today at the Court of Cassation, that’s how it should be interpreted, assured his lawyer, Maître Patrick Maisonneuve on the airwaves of RTL. He has always denied having committed a fault in the sense that we mean, a fault which would have consisted in deliberately cheating to implicate people. There was no regret in the sense that, no, he would not have failed in his mission in terms of professional rules.”