Boy Held in U.S. on Incest Charges Back With Family in Switzerland

After being held for six weeks in a Colorado jail on incest charges, an 11-year-old Swiss American boy returned home Friday to his family and a country outraged by the U.S. justice system.

Raoul Wuthrich’s case sparked an outcry in Switzerland and Germany when people there learned that sheriff’s officers had taken Raoul, then 10, from his Colorado home in handcuffs late at night.

Raoul’s parents and three sisters held him in a long embrace on the tarmac of Zurich’s airport Friday after he arrived on an overnight flight from Chicago.

Grinning and clutching a giant white teddy bear given to him by one of his sisters, Raoul waved to more than 100 reporters and camera teams kept at a distance.

The boy was allowed to leave the United States after a judge dismissed the incest charges against him Wednesday on procedural grounds.

The boy was accused of touching his 5-year-old half-sister inappropriately at their home in the Denver suburb of Evergreen. His parents, who fled to Switzerland with their three other children after the arrest, said he was only trying to help his sister urinate.

They said they had fled for fear that the girls also would be taken.

The family had no plans to return to the United States.