The victim admits that he blamed the teenager of North African descent to cover up his own brother’s abuse
For two decades, Farid el-Haïry proclaimed his innocence to the four corners of the world after being falsely accused and convicted in France of the rape and assault of a teenager in the late 1990s, but the judges didn’t believe him until this Thursday.
French justice has finally acknowledged that it was a mistake and annulled his sentence. He did so after the woman who accused him in 1998 withdrew in a letter. This is the twelfth case since 1945 that has been recognized as a wrongful act.
“After twenty-four years of suffering, I don’t really know what to say. All I can say is that I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through,” El-Haïry said on leaving the court. “Twenty-four years of pain, suffering and insults cannot be erased. I spent a year in prison , but the twenty-three years of mental incarceration were the hardest. Strokes hurt, but words are forever,” added this 41-year-old man, who for two decades was wrongly believed to be a rapist despite being innocent.
El-Haïry’s legal nightmare began when Julie D, a 15-year-old teenager, falsely accused him of raping and assaulting her in Hazebrouck, northern France. This son of a Moroccan immigrant and a French woman was 17 years old at the time. “It’s impossible. I’ve never had sexual relations,” he said at the time, without the police or judges believing him. It was his word against his accuser.
El-Haïry was sentenced in December 2003 to five years in prison, with four years and two months exempt from serving. He was held in pre-trial detention for a year, despite being innocent, and then periodically required to register with the Gendarmerie and was included in the judicial file of perpetrators of sexual and violent crimes.
His accuser, Julie D., had been silent for two decades until she sent a letter to Douai’s prosecutor in October 2017. “I confess that I have lied. Mr. Farid is not guilty of anything and has never committed acts of assault or rape against my person. The truth is this: Between the ages of 8 and 12 years, I have been the victim of repeated incest by my older brother,” Julie explained in her letter, allowing the miscarriage of justice to be acknowledged now.
To protect her family, Julie falsely blamed El-Haïry, a high school dropout who had a reputation for being a violent and petty criminal.
“The accusation against Farid El-Haïry is based only on a statement and a minor racist connotation that emerges in the report,” his lawyer, Frank Berton, complained last week on the BFMTV television network.
“I will never be able to forgive him,” El-Hairy said at his accuser’s hearing last week. “I understand her discomfort (being raped by her brother) because no one should have to go through that. But destroying my family to protect yours is mean,” added this victim of the French justice system.
Following the annulment of his sentence, El-Haïry plans to seek damages from the state for his wrongful conviction and will file a “defamatory complaint” case against his accuser.
Source: La Verdad
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