Daniel Legrand is the last accused acquitted in the Outreau case. Justice ruled twice on his innocence in 2005 and 2015. Yet the man still bears the consequences of this legal fiasco and the charges of pedophilia which targeted him.
Tried three times for the Outreau case and acquitted twice. Daniel Legrand was the last cleared defendant in this case, known as one of the greatest French judicial fiascos, which has haunted him since the 2000s. After the fact, the one who has always sat in the accused’s box shows the characteristics of a victim. In any case, this is the impression that the 33-year-old man gave in 2015, during the third and last trial for the Outreau case, at the Assize Court for minors in Rennes.
With a tear tattooed under his left eye and a weary attitude surely not unrelated to his psychiatric treatment at the time, Daniel Legrand had appeared tired and had on rare occasions had the strength to scream his innocence proclaimed by justice in 2005 by the Paris Court of Appeal. An innocence again recognized by the acquittal pronounced against the thirties in 2015. However, from the first days of the Outreau affair three of the children of Myriam Badaoui and Thierry Delay, victims of rape in the Outreau affair , accused Daniel Legrand of having abused them and/or of having witnessed the scenes of sexual assault.
The last acquitted of the Outreau case
Daniel Legrand was just 20 years old when, in 2001, when the gears of the Outreau affair won him. The court case robbed him of his youth, his dreams and his health. During the investigation, opened in Pas-de-Calais after the report of sexual assault on the children of the couple formed by Myriam Badaoui and Therry Delay, Daniel Legrand and his father who bore the same first name were arrested. The 48-year-old father was presented as the mastermind of a Franco-Belgian pedophilia ring while the son was accused of taking part in and filming orgies involving children.
The name of Daniel Legrand, father and son, had appeared in a list of people involved in sexual abuse according to the four Delay children: Chérif, 10, Dimitri, 8, Jonathan, 6, and Dylan, 4. Some admitted later that they did not know the two men, but the Legrands were also presented as culprits by Myriam Badaoui. Which had retracted during the 2004 trial at the Assize Court of Saint-Omer: “Nothing is true, I am sick and a liar. I lied because I followed the children”. At the end of the nine-week trial, Father Legrand was acquitted but his son was sentenced to three years in prison, two of which were suspended. Daniel Legrand son was finally acquitted in turn on appeal in Paris in 2005 like six other defendants. The Outreau case then counted thirteen people acquitted out of the seventeen accused in the trial.
An acquittal followed by a third trial
Daniel Legrand believed this painful story behind him but was caught up in the case in 2015. He was then the only one to appear in Outreau’s third trial. A trial opened in the face of the tenacity of the Innocence in danger child protection association, which demanded the judgment of the man acquitted for facts dating back to 1997 and 1999 when he was a minor and which had not been treated at first instance or on appeal. The man had again been acquitted but had been even more damaged by this new legal battle. “I can’t believe that I’m being tried again for the same facts, ten years after being acquitted”, he had also launched at the opening of the trial noted Slate.
Daniel Legrand, accused of rape by child victims of Outreau
Cited among the defendants in 2004 and 2005, Daniel Legrand was still held responsible for sexual abuse by the child victims of the Outreau affair in 2015. During the third trial, the children of the Badaoui-Delay couple – respectively sentenced to 15 years and 20 years in prison in 2004 – spoke at the bar against the man who had been acquitted ten years earlier. And they harbored hopes of seeing justice done in their eyes. “If he is acquitted or has a suspended sentence, I am freaking out: it is my last cartridge”, had dropped Cherif Delay before the verdict according to remarks reported at the time by The world.
At the helm, three children of the siblings had maintained the charges against Daniel Legrand and Jonathan Delay had incriminated the man with the tattooed tear associating him with scenes of rape recalled Point : “I know he was there, I can assure you he was there, I am not here today in front of you to lie”. During the trial, the statements of the Delay children had been put in parallel with their hearings during which they had also admitted not knowing the father or the son Legrand. The 2015 decision had put an end to the Outreau affair by once again ruling the innocence of Daniel Legrand. In fact, however, the Delay children remain dissatisfied victims of the judgment and the acquitted man also came out of this case more damaged than ever.
The aftermath of the Outreau affair on Daniel Legrand
The Outreau affair “destroyed” the life of Daniel Legrand as the man himself explained to Release and European 1. The satisfaction of being cleared during the appeal trial in 2005 quickly gave way to reality and the aftermath of the court case. At 24, in 2005, after two and a half years in prison and deprived of his dream of becoming a professional footballer, the man had fallen into depression to the point of diving into drugs and once again facing justice for detention. illicit substances. Had then undergone heavy and very disabling psychiatric treatment, the effects of which had been visible during the 2015 trial. Already Daniel Legrand explained to European 1 : “I will always be a victim of Outreau, it will follow me until the end of my life”. At the end of the last trial, the barely 33-year-old man also said: “I can’t project myself into the future, I am so destroyed”.