On the night of November 5, 1991, the body of one of Britain's most powerful men was found floating naked in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands. Robert Maxwell—media baron, Labour MP, multimillionaire, and father of nine—had vanished from his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, hours earlier.

The victim of the Du Pont incest was a child whose name would never appear in public records. The defendant was a man whose name carried the weight of American aristocracy: Richards was the great-grandson of Irénée du Pont, a patriarch of the legendary Du Pont chemical fortune.

On February 19, 2026—his 66th birthday—Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and the man who had been His Royal Highness the Prince Andrew, Duke of York, was arrested by Thames Valley Police on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

The girls were taken to Marc Dutroux's house in Marcinelle, near Charleroi, where he had constructed a concealed dungeon in the basement; a cell measuring just 2.15 meters long, less than a meter wide, and 1.64 meters high, hidden behind a massive concrete door disguised as a shelf.

The Outreau affair stands as one of the most profound miscarriages of justice in modern French history, a "judicial Chernobyl" that exposed catastrophic failures within the legal system, the judiciary, and the media.