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Ten convicted in French pedophilia case
A French court convicted 10 people in a pedophile case on Friday, finding six of them guilty of child rape after a controversial trial which rocked France's justice system. After nearly two months of hearings and 15 hours of deliberations, the court in the northern town of Saint-Omer sentenced 37-year-old Myriam Delay-Badaoui, the woman at the center of the trial, to 15 years in prison for child rape.
Her husband, unemployed alcoholic Thierry Delay, 40, and a couple who were their neighbors, were also handed hefty prison sentences for rape. All four had confessed to raping the Delay couple's four children.
The court also sentenced priest Dominique Wiel and another man to prison for rape, and found four others guilty of abusing, but not raping, children. All six had pleaded not guilty.
Seven other people were acquitted.
The 10 convictions were handed down despite Delay-Badaoui's testimony in May that an accusation she had made previously, that 13 of those on trial -- all except the two couples -- were involved in a pedophile ring, was false.
Her retractions raised questions about whether the legal system had failed the defendants, and prompted Justice Minister Dominique Perben to pledge action if errors had been made.
"I want to understand what happened. I don't want this to happen again," Perben told a news conference on Friday where he announced the government would study reforms of the legal system in light of the Outreau trial.
Delay-Badaoui, her husband and their neighbors David Delplanque and Aurelie Grenon admitting taking part in rapes and other bestial acts at Delay-Badaoui's home in Outreau in northern France from 1995 until 2000, when social services raised the alarm.
Although the two couples were expected to be found guilty, Delay-Badaoui's withdrawal of her accusations was widely expected to result in a 'not guilty' verdict for the six other defendants who were convicted.
Only two days earlier France was shocked by the announcement by Belgian prosecutors that a French forest warden and convicted rapist had confessed to raping and killing six girls, and may well have killed more people.
The confession by warden Michel Fourniret, 62, in custody in Belgium since last year in connection with a separate abduction, prompted authorities across western Europe to reopen unsolved murder and disappearance files going back 30 years. |
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