A demanding documentary titled Outreau, a French nightmareNetflix takes a look back at a legal case that marked France, mixing real-life drama and fake child-trafficking rings. Producers Elodie Polo Ackermann and Jean-Paul Geronimi look back at the origins of the project.
They met many of the actors in this story, still an extraordinary twenty-three years later. Producers Elodie Polo Ackerman and Jean-Paul Geronimie researched Outreau’s case for Netflix. They produced a detailed, thorough and breathtaking documentary in four episodes, Outreau, a French nightmareposted online on March 15. Outreau, before being a legal fiasco name, is one of the suburbs of Boulogne-sur-Mer. It was there, right at the Tour du Renard, in the HLM building, that four children were raped by their parents, Miriam Badaoui and Frank Daley, and several neighbors, Aurélie Grenon and David Delplanc. At that time, these little boys between the ages of 4 and 10 started calling people around them or people they heard about, as well as child abusers, in addition to the real culprits. Their mother, Miriam Badaoui, a certified mythomaniac, confirmed their allegations and even added new stories. Little by little, the young judge Bourgoud, then presiding over the case, began to investigate the alleged child abuse network between France and Belgium. In all, thirteen people were jailed, sometimes for up to three years, before being acquitted in two trials that went down in French legal history.
Madame Figaro .- Why did you want to return to the Outreau case?
Jean-Paul Geronimi. Outreau’s case has a social dimension, as it speaks indirectly about the French judicial system or the collection of children’s words, topics that are at the heart of today’s debates. It is interesting to look at this story twenty years later.
Elodie Polo Ackerman. With Jean-Paul, this is not the first time that we deal with major cases that have interested and marked the French society. In particular, we made a documentary series about the unsolved murder of little Grigori (Gregory), or the story of Florence Casses (Florence Casse’s case was found guilty), a French woman who was imprisoned in Mexico for drug trafficking. We like to flesh out these stories in their complexity in longforms that leave room for subtlety.
Twenty-three years later, have you learned anything yet?
J.-PG- It is a very complex story that has affected the collective unconscious. However, no one remembers it exactly. People are only able to tell bits and pieces of it. It’s over-hyped, there’s a lot of characters, a lot of things to consider. We learned that there are fifteen stories in history. So, we try to combine all the points of view in the documentary: the victims, the acquitted, the judge, the lawyers, to reveal all this from a new perspective.
You’ve managed to get people involved in the case that we’ve heard very little about, like Judge Bourgogne, who seems to be sticking to his position. What did they bring to the documentary?
EPA – Judge Burgo tells things, and in his unspoken words reveals his way of living this story. Unlike other documentary approaches, we want to respect everyone’s point of view. His trajectory fascinated us because it is pivotal. That’s what the intro to this series says, this judge finds himself with millions of eyes on him to judge a unique justice case.
J.-PG- We introduced these new “characters” like Judge Bourgogne gradually, as the documentary follows the temporal thread of the story. During the second trial, we were also able to interview the President of the Paris Court of Appeal, Judge Mondine-Hederer, who has heard little or nothing since. He reviews the reopening of the case from the inside, with huge stakes for the acquitted and the victims.
What precautions should you take when dealing with this delicate subject?
EPA – When we work on cases like Outreau or little Gregory, we try to convey to the authors the fact that we never forget that there is an intimate drama at play for each of the characters. For each of them, it’s a form of risk-taking.
What was the process of making the documentary?
EPA – During the preparation of the investigation, which lasted more than two years, we went so far as to read, among other things, tens of thousands of pages of the directive. At the beginning of the work, we told ourselves that, like the plane crash, we were going to study Outreau’s black box.
J.-PG- If we have reached the parliamentary committee, it is because this story has gone off the rails in many places, it is interesting to see it in its details.
In the Outreau case, people pointed out that the monsters were sudden victims
Jean-Paul Geronimi, producer
Why do you think this case is still fascinating two decades later?
J.-PG- There are several components that already have these very catchy “monsters,” “tower of horror” newspaper headlines that date back to the time of the events. If we look back about twenty years ago, we were just coming out of the case of Belgian child abuser Marc Dutroux. So there was fertile ground for this story in France. What makes it special news is also the excitement of the beginning and the radical change in the position of public opinion, which we clearly see in the press. Suddenly, people who appear to be monsters have become victims, there is some kind of dizziness.
Did you have a hard time convincing the characters to come and testify?
J.-PG- It was difficult to convince everyone for the simple reason that this affair was traumatic for each of them. Even twenty years later, it still sparkles. They trusted us to deliver their words the way they wanted. We’re calling on the intelligence of the Netflix audience to take this word, this story, and think about it for themselves.
Source: Le Figaro
