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In a world where 10-year-boys sometimes reduce their little sisters to bawling with scary stories, pummel them into walking the dog when it's not their turn, and make like to stuff their hands down the kitchen garbage disposal, Raoul Wüthrich may be guilty of minor naughtiness-- or nothing at all.

Last May 25th, while playing in the garden of his family's home in Evergreen, Colorado, the boy was seen helping his five-year-old half- sister take off her panties. The boy maintains that he was only helping her urinate. His sister confirms this, according to the children's mother. But in the eyes of next door neighbor Laura Mehmert, peering into the Wüthrich's yard, the 10-year-old was perpetrating sexual assault. She didn't ask the children what was going on. She didn't yell at them to stop. She didn't phone their parents. Rather, she called the police.

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Two months later, on August 30, around 10:30 pm, cops knocked on the Wüthrichs' door to arrest Raoul, who had just turned 11. They took him from his bed and lead him away in handcuffs. For the next 50 days, Jefferson County authorities held the boy at in the Mount View prison outside of Denver, a juvenile jail. Raoul, described as small for his age, was taken to court for one hearing in handcuffs and shackles.

In the US, such a prosecution would only be local news. But Raoul and his family are a dual Swiss-US nationals, so the boy's arrest was filtered through foreign sensibilities.

Shortly after he was jailed, Raoul's parents Andreas and Beverly left Colorado for Switzerland with their three daughters, fearing, they said, prosecution themselves and the loss of their other children. Jefferson County prosecutors seemed primed to pounce: they declared suspicions about the family because they were uncooperative in the investigation, and claimed to have a witness who said that the couple sometimes watched pornography in front of their children, which the parents say isn't so. Authorities conducted an interview with Raoul's sister, who reported that Raoul had touched her on previous occasions, which prosecutors deemed proof that the 11-year-old was a child molester.

On October 19th, Judge Marilyn Leonard found probable cause and set a trial date. She ordered the boy taken from prison and sent to a foster home. If convicted as charged with "aggravated incest," Raoul faced up to two years in prison.

A case with holes big as...

Meanwhile, outrage in Switzerland grew over the boy's treatment. In Bern, the Department of Foreign Affairs said it was "astonished that a child of this age... has been arrested under such circumstances." The Swiss Justice Office declared that "there is considerable doubt in the minds of people here that Raoul committed an act that would fall within the Swiss definition of a criminal act." Swiss and German TV news camerapeople gathered daily in front of the Mount View prison, filing reports on Raoul's continuing incarceration. The Swiss government formally protested Raoul's treatment to American authorities, and flew its consul from Denver to interview him. Amnesty International protested the use of handcuffs and leg irons and the lengthy pretrial incarceration.

With mounting international pressure, Jefferson County District Judge James Zimmerman ruled on November 10, that Colorado had violated Raoul's right to a speedy trial, threw out the charges, and set him free.

This did not sit well Laura Mehmert, whose call to police touched off the scandal. "I am heartsick that he will never get the help that he needs and that his sister will never be validated,'' she told the Associated Press. "If they don't keep them under a microscope, we'll hear about Raoul again."

But in Switzerland, where he flew from Denver with a consular official, Raoul's release was treated as if the joyous end of a national ordeal. The Swiss tabloid Blick ran a rare second edition welcoming his return November 12th with a banner headline, "Free!"