A YOUNG magistrate with the face and haircut of a Boy Scout became the focus of nationwide attention in France yesterday as he defended his role in a paedophile case that has turned into one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent French history.

The main French television channels scrapped afternoon programmes to show Judge Fabrice Burgaud’s appearance before a parliamentary committee inquiring into the affair.

“I do not pretend to have carried out my investigation perfectly,” he said. “Could I have acted differently? With the benefit of hindsight, certainly. Did I make mistakes? Probably. Who does not? What examining magistrate does not?”

The judge, 34, has come to symbolise the failings of French criminal justice after leading the investigation into what he mistakenly thought was a child abuse network in Outreau near Calais in northern France.

The case has similarities to the Cleveland scandal in Britain in which 121 children were removed from their families in 1987.

In his first posting after leaving the French National School for Magistrates, Judge Burgaud imprisoned 18 people, including a bailiff, a baker and a priest, on suspicion of sexual assault amid claims of orgies, bestiality and bodies buried in a Belgian farmyard.

But three years later, 13 of the defendants were acquitted when it became clear that the paedophile ring had never existed. “L’affaire Outreau” was in fact a sordid but minor case involving two couples. The child abuse network had been invented by a disturbed child unable to distinguish fact from fiction after being raped by his mother and father.

One defendant, François Mourmand, committed suicide in jail before his innocence was demonstrated. Another, Alain Marécaux, tried to take his life last month, but was saved. In a personal letter of apology to the families, President Chirac said that the affair was a “disaster” for French justice.

Seven of those wrongly imprisoned by Judge Burgaud were at parliament to hear his testimony, along with M Mourmand’s sister, Lydia. She was holding a large photograph of her late brother, which she kissed from time to time as the magistrate spoke.

Pierre Martel, 57, a taxi driver who was among those acquitted said: “I feel sorry for him. He looks like a little boy.”

Judge Burgaud, who is described by his critics as arrogant and inflexible, has received hate mail and death threats since the appeal hearing last year. He looked frail, pale and unsure of himself yesterday as he sat before the committee at the National Assembly in a grey suit and blue tie.

“I am terribly shocked to have been presented as a machine who applies the law without humanity,” he said in a hesitant voice.

Judge Burgaud said that his work had been checked and approved by other magistrates, lending weight to claims that he has become the scapegoat for a wider failure that demands an overhaul of the French legal system.

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