No wonder they're going to have a penal inquiry …

October 18, 2003
Saturday

No wonder they're going to have a penal inquiry …

Brian Micklethwait (London) French affairs

(1)

Courtesy of one of the great Middle Men of the Internet, Dave Barry, comes this gripping story:

Bordeaux, France – A French magistrate caught masturbating during a court session was locked up on Thursday and put under investigation, justice officials in the south-western city of Bordeaux said.

The head judge of the city's appeals court said "a penal inquiry ordered by the prosecutor of the republic is currently being carried out by the police" while a request for a psychiatric evaluation of the magistrate – who was not named – had been made.

He said the justice ministry had also been asked to temporarily suspend the magistrate while the matter was looked into.

According to La Charente Libre, a local newspaper who had a reporter in court at the time of the alleged offence, the magistrate had discreetly lifted up his ceremonial robe while a lawyer was presenting final arguments, undid his pants and "engaged in gestures that left nothing to the imagination". – Sapa-AFP

Which, said a later commenter chez Barry, is how justice gets to be blind.

Comments

At first I thought the story might be a hoax or 'urban legend', but I checked it out at the home page of 'La Charente Libre' and there it was in gory detail. No mention as to whether the culprit finished his act of self-abuse, though.

At the risk of teaching 99% of readers to suck eggs: don't judge a website by its cover. Yesterday an article began doing the email rounds in the European Commission's Intranet concerning the practice of fellatio as a potential cure for breast cancer. It was allegedly published in the serious daily 'La Libre Belgique'. In fact, it was an online forgery. But one European official I know said it 'must be true' because it was 'in the papers'!

Now there's even an English version of the hoax, embellished with the names of certain commissioners, and straight from yesterday's The Guardian Online.

On the Net, anything goes.

Posted by Charles Copeland at October 18, 2003 12:32 PM

Funny, I've always thought it was the LAWYERS who were the wankers.

Posted by Kim du Toit at October 18, 2003 10:20 PM

Wasn't that on Monty Python?

Posted by Joseph Hertzlinger at October 20, 2003 02:40 AM

Just goes to show that the French, they really ARE a Funny Race.......

Posted by Macker at October 20, 2003 10:06 AM

A penile enquirey surely.

Posted by Edmund Burke at October 20, 2003 02:16 PM

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