Woman Recants Rape Accusation After 20 Years, Exonerating Wrongfully Convicted Man

After the recent rehabilitation of Farid El Hairy by the French justice system, Marie, his accuser, has for the first time shared the true version of the story on television. Invited on the "Sept à Huit" program on TF1, the woman expressed her regrets for having lied and ruined the life of an innocent.

The case dates back to 1998 in France. At the age of 15 at the time, she confided to her relatives that she would have been the victim of a certain Farid who raped her. Her parents then forced her to file a complaint. The young man, then 17 years old, was sentenced to 5 years in prison, 4 of which were firm, for rape and sexual assault. Gnawed by remorse, Marie retracted in writing before the authorities in 2017, admitting that she had lied. Last week, the French justice system solemnly recognized Farid El Hairy’s innocence in the case.

"I never wanted to file a complaint, and at one point, the adults in my family asked me to talk to a therapist to file a complaint. I talk to this therapist, and at one point, he makes me go out and then he calls the prosecutor, I think. And a few days later, the investigators were at home. And after that, everything went very fast. Well, I was there without being there. It was a very, very dark period of my life," explains Marie.

"I’ve always had a weight, the guilt. The shame, the shame of the lie. All this shame, I buried it and I tell myself that I am a horrible person. And I had to speak up. I lied, it shouldn’t have happened, that’s all. What haunted me the most were his parents. Because I said to myself that they thought he was guilty, when in fact..."