The Outreau Case: A French Nightmare

This docu series is a bit of a mixed bag and I'm not sure where it was trying to place it's focus. Pdf ring conviction? Unreliable testimony? Police malpractice? People getting away with it? I mean it's all over the place.

The beginning is solid. There are the accusations, the people involved, the web is built...sort of. You never learn really how everyone is connected at all, so they're all floating 'monsters', but the children's testimonies are horrific and it's terrible. Enough said.

At some point in this series a seed of doubt is planted. There is something not quite right going on. The main mother seems to have some form of Munchausens, in whatever form that takes shape in this situation of her feeding off attention.

Then this docu series decends into inchoerent chaos. Suddenly there are more people accused, more kids never actually introduced. More horrific crimes, more accusations. It's actually impossible to clarify what's true and what's not. People confessed, people proclaimed innocence. People got convicted.

And pause.

Now would be the time to sober up in this series, and try to sort the wheat from the chaff of everything that came before. Nope. It diverts it's course from the actual crimes commited to the people who were wrongly convicted. It's bizarre.

You would assume that it would focus on the childrens testimonials. Were they 100% genuine? What actually happened and what did the police/caregivers do to influence the implication of potentially innocent people? Nope, nothing.

One thing you never learn, is how much was true and how much actually happened, and how it ended up the way it did. It's actually heartbreaking. Because clearly something happened, but it was put on the back burner for this.