The case known as the Outreau Affair has remained in the French national memory as a symbol of a judicial error: a cold and incompetent judge, children who lie, a mythomaniac who invents accusations, and adults finally acquitted after years of provisional detention after two high media profile trials. Is Outreau a judicial fiasco? And what if the scandal lay elsewhere?
Ten years later, this incredible film deciphers the real ins and outs of a case that traumatized public opinion and destablized the French judicial system. For the first time, the magistrates, pyschiatric experts, journalists, and politician accepted to tells us about how they experienced this Outreau Affair. Their tales veer from the official story. Throughout this film, another truth sees the light of day. The truth of children whose words were stifled and whose rights were swept aside.
Hearings transformed into boxing arenas, child victims who were put in the witness box because of the lack of room in the court, defense lawyers who were the only ones to get to express themselves in the media, and a judge attached from all sides - with the approval of politicians. This film throws a new light on this judicial malfunction and questions the strange relations between justice, politics, and news.
