the essential
Twenty years after the trial, the writer Jean Songe, from Moissac (Tarn-et-Garonne), returns in depth to the Outreau affair with an edifying book, published on April 12 by Editions du Seuil.
Twenty years have passed. Twenty years since this famous trial which some described as a trial of shame.
From May 4 to July 2, 2004, the stakeholders took turns in the court arena of the peaceful Saint-Omer in Pas-de-Calais. The so-called “Outreau” affair had just hit the headlines at the turn of the millennium, with its share of horrors, each more extravagant than the last. All the ingredients were there to uncover the most explosive media and legal grenade of the beginning of the century. A proximity, already, both almost homonymous and geographical (with the Dutroux affair a few years before, in nearby Belgium), on similar acts of child crime.
Sordid sounds
The social context (dilapidated buildings, alcohol, idleness, material and intellectual poverty), the sordid demeanors which flatter the baser instincts, the media overexposure, the repeated dysfunctions of institutions have provided the breeding ground for biggest legal disaster in France in recent decades.
It has been more than two years since the Moissagais writer Jean Songe (Yannick Bourg in the city) took up the file on his own. This esthete of the noir novel has also become a master of the “investigative story” since My Atomic Life (published in 2016 by Calman-Lévy), a slasher about the errors of the nuclear industry in France, and Sodexo la glutonne (published by Seuil , September 2021), on the not always fantastic epic of this family catering empire.
With “In the Shadow of Outreau”, which has just been released on April 12 also by Editions du Seuil, Jean Songe did not have to force the point, as his transcriptions of the trial are sufficient in themselves. The epicenter of this madness is located around the infernal Delay couple and their four sons (the main victims), around whom gravitated (or would have gravitated, backpedaling is legion in the testimonies) a good fifteen adults and as many of children for this scabrous story of a pseudo-child pornography and pimping network.
A totally outdated judicial system
There were those convicted, those acquitted, but what the author rightly points out throughout the approximately 400 pages of this monumental work of an investigative ant are the culpable weaknesses of education and social investigations, and above all the almost abandonment of the main victims, the martyred children, to their sad fate.
A reading that is sometimes disturbing, but necessary, as it highlights the dark side of human nature and the impotence, tangible through these lines, of a judicial system totally overwhelmed by the scale of this sordid affair. The strength of this work lies in the distance that Jean Songe was able to take when studying this substantial issue, without falling into the traps of melodrama and sensationalism. A true professional work, written with a lively, alert and concerned pen, a true signature of the author. The book is now available in bookstores and on all internet platforms.
