Five men and a woman who were convicted of child sex offenses a year ago were cleared on appeal on Thursday at the end of one of France's most embarrassing judicial fiascos.
The acquittal at the Paris appeals court came a day after an unprecedented apology by a leading state prosecutor who told the six that their trial had been a "veritable catastrophe."
The appellants were among 17 people from the northern town of Outreau who were tried in May last year after a three-year investigation into an alleged pedophile ring.
Charges against all but the two couples at the center of the affair have now collapsed.
The case has raised troubling questions about the willingness of social services and psychiatric experts to accept uncorroborated allegations made by young children, and about the power given to lone examining magistrates under the French judicial system.
At the original trial in the northern town of Saint-Omer, the case for the prosecution appeared to fall apart after the key witness -- Myriam Badaoui-Delay -- broke down in tears and admitted lying to incriminate most of the other defendants.
But though seven of the accused were acquitted in July last year, 10 others were convicted.
Six of these, including a married couple and a priest, continued to protest their innocence, but were sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years for rape and sexual attacks on young children.
At their three-week appeal hearing the state deliberately failed to renew its case -- a clear act of recognition that the six were victims of a miscarriage of justice.
And in a dramatic intervention on the eve of Thursday's verdict, Yves Bot, the senior prosecutor at the Paris appeals court, expressed his "regrets" to the appellants and promised reforms of judicial procedures to ensure similar mistakes are not repeated.
"I do not know how we will be able to repair the damage. We cannot say it was simply the fault of one or two people. That would be easy -- we would just have to sack them. For us, the magistrature, the work is just beginning," Bot said.
Earlier there was a minute's silence in court in memory of Francois Mourmand, another defendant in the affair who committed suicide in prison before coming to trial.
The story broke in February 2001 after the arrest of Badaoui-Delay and her partner, who were accused of raping their own son.
Against a backdrop of the notorious Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighboring Belgium, allegations quickly spread as neighbors and acquaintances were drawn into the inquiry.
In all, 18 children were alleged to have been raped over five years, but lawyers now agree that most of their witness statements were the result of pressure from adults.
What once appeared to be a complex network of abuse was in fact limited to two homes.
Particular criticism has been levelled at Fabrice Burgaud, the young investigating magistrate who persisted with the charges despite growing doubts about their reliability. He is alleged to have pressurized defendants into confessions and willfully ignored contradictory evidence.
Among the reforms under consideration as a result of the judicial disaster is the appointment of a second examining magistrate in sensitive cases.
Many of the children who were named in the investigation remain with foster families despite the collapse of the prosecution case against their parents.
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