Following alerts launched by social services within the Delay family, a long investigation seemed to reveal an extensive pedophile network: around forty adults had been accused and around fifty children were potentially victims.
The case thus resulted in four final convictions of the two couples, as well as the acquittal of thirteen of the seventeen accused (some of whom were parents of children recognised as victims), several of whom had been held in prison for one to three years.
The particularities of the trials of the Outreau affair made it a sensitive and controversial subject, while the words of the child victims have been misrepresented and not all those acquitted would be innocent.
The Outreau affair caused distrust among young victims in France, with a 40% drop in child sexual assault convictions in the decade following the acquittal on appeal.
The affair began when some school teachers and social workers noticed "strange sexual behavior" from four children of the Delay-Badaoui family.
The children's testimony took place in "huis clos" (behind closed doors); such a procedure is normal in France for victims of sexual abuse, especially minors.
The appeal took place before Paris' Cour d'assises, composed of three professional judges and twelve jurors, used as an appellate court for review of both facts and law.
The defence renounced its right to plead, preferring to observe a minute of silence in favour of François Mourmand, who had died in prison during remand.
The role of an inexperienced magistrate, Fabrice Burgaud,[8] fresh out of the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature was underscored, as well as the undue weight given to children's words and to psychiatric expertise, both of which were revealed to have been wrong.
In 2007 the existence of a confidential IGAS (General Inspectorate of Health and Social Affairs) report was announced by Le Point newspaper, in which it emerged that for five of the 17 children in the case, whose parents were acquitted, signs suggestive of sexual abuse had been identified.
In January 2006, there was a special parliamentary enquiry (for the first time broadcast live on television) about this catastrophe judiciaire (judicial disaster), which had been called by President Chirac in order to help prevent a recurrence of this situation through alterations in France's legal system.
[10] On February 23, 2012, the criminal court of Boulogne-sur-Mer sentenced Franck and Sandrine Lavier, two acquitted from Outreau, to ten and eight months in prison respectively, suspended for habitual violence (not of a sexual nature) against two of their children.
[11] In 2011 a film, Présumé coupable (English title: Presumed Guilty) was released, a drama documentary about the case from the viewpoint of Alain Marecaux, one of the acquitted defendants (even though accused of sex offense by his son François-Xavier Marécaux), based on his memoirs.
[13] During the hearing, the behaviour of Éric Dupond-Moretti, lawyer for the Outreau acquitted, and later French Justice minister, is also called into question.
Éric Maurel, at the time prosecutor of Saint-Omer, says in front of the General Inspectorate of Judicial Services that he believes that during the trial the victims "were mishandled", that "the children were harassed by questions from the various defense lawyers.