flashback: Non existent pedophile network: The Marc Dutroux Affair

....Another lone 'gunman'

Introduction

Marc Dutroux (born 6 November 1956 in Brussels) is a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls during 1995 and 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, later proved insane.

He was arrested in 1996 and has been in prison since then. His widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country's criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium's law enforcement agencies.

Before the kidnappings

In February 1986, Dutroux and Martin were arrested for abducting and raping five young girls. In April 1989 he was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison; Martin received a sentence of five years. Showing good behaviour in prison, he was released on parole in April 1992, after having served slightly more than three years. He (Dutroux) had been jailed for child rape in 1989, but under Belgium's ultra-liberal parole rules was freed after serving only three years of a 13-year sentence

Upon releasing Dutroux, the parole board received a warning letter written by his own mother to the prison director.

Meanwhile, the man who had returned Dutroux to society, Justice Minister Melchior Wathelet, was “rewarded with a prestigious appointment to serve as a judge at the European Court of Justice at The Hague”.

After his release, he was able to convince a psychiatrist that he was disabled, resulting in a government pension. He also received sleeping pills and sedatives from the doctor, which he would later use to quiet the abducted girls.

He came to own seven houses, most of them vacant, and he used three of them to torture the girls he kidnapped. In his house in Marcinelle near Charleroi (Hainaut), where he lived most of the time, he started to construct a concealed dungeon in the basement. Hidden behind a massive concrete door disguised as a shelf, the cell was 2.15 metres (7 feet) long, less than a meter (3 feet) wide and 1.64 metres (5.38 feet) high.

Abductions and arrest

Some of the following describes the events as alleged by the prosecution.

Julie Lejeune (age 8) and Mélissa Russo (age 8) were kidnapped together on June 24, 1995, probably by Dutroux, and imprisoned in Dutroux's cellar. Dutroux repeatedly sexually abused the girls and produced pornographic videos.

17-year-old An Marchal and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks were kidnapped on August 22, 1995 while on a camping trip in Ostend, probably by Dutroux and his drug-addicted accomplice Michel Lelièvre, who was being paid with drugs. Since the dungeon was already in use, Dutroux chained the girls to a bed in a room of his house. His wife was aware of all these activities. The prosecution alleged that Dutroux killed An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks several weeks later, but the exact circumstances of the murder are unknown.

In late 1995, Dutroux came under investigation for his involvement in stolen luxury cars. He was in custody from December 6, 1995 until March 20, 1996. It is likely that Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo starved to death during this time.

Sabine Dardenne was kidnapped and imprisoned in the dungeon on May 28, 1996 on her way to school, probably by Dutroux and his accomplice Michel Lelièvre. She was 12 at the time. On August 9, 1996, the two men kidnapped Laetitia Delhez (14) when she was walking home at night from a public swimming pool. A police investigation found an eye witness who could remember part of a license plate which matched Dutroux's.

Dutroux, his wife Martin and Lelièvre were arrested on August 13, 1996. A search of his houses did not turn up anything. After two days, both Dutroux and Lelièvre confessed. Then Dutroux led investigators to the dungeon hidden in his basement. Sabine Dardenne and Laetitia Delhez were found alive there on August 15.

In an interview conducted several years later, Ms. Dardenne related that Dutroux told her that she was being kidnapped by a gang, that her parents did not want to pay, and that the gang therefore was planning to kill her. He presented himself as the "good guy" protecting her from the gang. He let her write letters to her family, which he read but never posted.

On August 17, Dutroux led police to another house of his, in Sars-la-Buissière (Hainaut). The bodies of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo as well as Dutroux's supposed accomplice Bernard Weinstein were found in the garden. An autopsy found that the two girls died from starvation. Dutroux had crushed Weinstein's testicles until he revealed a money hiding place, then he drugged him and buried him alive. Dutroux told police that he had killed Weinstein because he had failed to feed the girls during Dutroux's time in custody. Finally, Dutroux told police where to find the bodies of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks. They were located on September 3, 1996 in Jumet (Hainaut), buried under a shack next to a house owned by Dutroux. Weinstein had lived in that house for three years.

Several hundred pornographic videos with underage victims were found in Dutroux's houses.

Shortcomings of the investigation, public outcry

Authorities were criticised for various aspects of the case. Perhaps most notably, police searched Dutroux's house on December 13, 1995 and again on December 19, 1995 in relation to his car theft charge. During this time, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were still alive in the basement dungeon, but they were not found. Incredibly, the gendarmerie searched Dutroux’s home and failed find the girls imprisoned in the basement. However, one officer heard children crying-

They failed to investigate the cries of the girls that they heard, accepting Dutroux’s claim that the noise was coming from children playing in the street.  (Ed:  yep, trust the guy you’re investigating)

Despite finding handcuffs, chloroform, vaginal cream and a speculum (an instrument used in gynecological exams), the police did not detain Dutroux and left his home.

 Several early hints as to Dutroux's intentions were not properly followed-up. In the course of their investigation, Belgian police were told  Dutroux had offered money to a police informer for providing girls  (Police ignored a tip from a Dutroux informant in 1993, in which he stated that Dutroux offered him between $3,000 and $5,000 to kidnap young girls. ) and told him that Dutroux had been digging in his basement, creating a dungeon where he was planning to warehouse his victims before, according to the police source, he sold them abroad. No formal report of the tip was ever made.

His mother also wrote a second letter to police, claiming that he held girls captive in his houses:

In 1995, Dutroux's own mother wrote to prosecutors reporting that she had knowledge that her son had been keeping young girls in one of his unoccupied houses. The same man who tipped off police to Dutroux's offer of money to kidnap young girls, later told police in 1995 that he had learned that Dutroux was building a dungeon to keep girls in that he would later sell into prostitution.

Belgians were further angered at the possibility of there being a government cover-up:

There was widespread anger and frustration among Belgians due to police errors and the general slowness of the investigation. This anger culminated when the popular investigative judge in charge of the case, Jean-Marc Connerotte,  was dismissed after having participated in a fund raising dinner by the girls' parents. Many Belgians viewed Connerotte as a hero because he secured the arrest of Marc Dutroux and collected significant evidence that would help convict Dutroux and those in his pedophile ring. He had also freed the captive girls from the house.

His dismissal resulted in a massive protest march (the "White March") of 300,000 people on the capital, Brussels, in October 1996, in which demands were made for reforms of Belgium's police and justice system.

A 17-month investigation by a parliamentary commission into the Dutroux affair produced a report in February 1998. The commission found that while Dutroux did not have accomplices in high positions of police and justice system, as he continued to claim, he profited from corruption, sloppiness and incompetence.

There was speculation that Dutroux was part of a widespread network of pedophiles and Satanists, supposedly including prominent Belgians. This charge was in particular made by the parents of the abducted girls, as well as by Dutroux himself. Some sources, including Belgian police (Ed: now we should listen to the corrupt, sloppy and incompetent police!?!?!) , have questioned the accuracy of such claims. Unhappy with the conduct of the investigation, the parents of Mélissa Russo and Julie Lejeune pulled out of the trial in 2002.

The trial

Dutroux's trial began on March 1, 2004, some seven and a half years after his initial arrest. It was a trial by jury and up to 450 people were called upon to testify.

Throughout the trial, Dutroux continued to insist that he was part of a Europe-wide pedophile ring with accomplices amongst police officers, businessmen, doctors, and even high-level Belgian politicians.

On the third day of the trial, Expatica.com reported that Dutroux claimed that Lelievre and two police officers had actually helped him kidnap An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambreckx, 19, who were found raped and murdered.

 March 4 brought the testimony of dismissed Judge Jean-Marc Connerotte who told the court that he was personally shocked at the "terrifying professionalism" that Dutroux displayed when he constructed the cell in his home to hide his victims. The cell had been specially designed to ventilate the air from the ceiling so that it would be difficult to detect the girls even with K-9 units.

Evans-Pritchard also wrote that Judge Connerotte broke down in tears when he described "the bullet-proof vehicles and armed guards needed to protect him against the shadowy figures determined to stop the full truth coming out. Never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the kind been subjected to such pressure. We were told by police that [murder] contracts had been taken out against the magistrates." Connerotte testified that the investigation was seriously hampered by protection of suspects by people in the government. "Rarely," he said, "has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry." He believed that the mafia had taken control of the case.

In a rare move, the jury at the assize trial publicly protested the replacement judge Stéphane Goux's handling of the debates and perceived rushing of the victims' testimonies.

On March 18, a new controversy arose when a handcuff key was found in Dutroux's cell, apparently smuggled in a salt bag. Prison authorities were accused to trying to arrange Dutroux's escape. The alleged murderer had already accomplished one earlier prison escape.

Sentencing

Others who were detained or arrested in connection with the Dutroux murders and child-sex ring included, Dutroux's second wife Michelle Martin and Jean-Michel Nihoul, a businessman who confessed to organizing an orgy at a Belgium chateau, which several government officials, police officers, and a former European Commissioner attended. Michel Lelievre, an accomplice in the kidnapping of An Marchal and Eefje Lambreks, was also arrested.

On June 22 Dutroux received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment, while Martin received 30 years and Lelievre 25 years. Although Nihoul was acquitted of kidnapping and conspiracy charges, he was convicted on drug related charges and received 5 years.

What has never been satisfactorily answered for the people of Belgium is whether the network of pedophiles that Dutroux claimed to be serving ever really existed.

If indeed Dutroux was part of a much bigger network, as seems likely when one looks at the evidence, then most of its members escaped detection. It seems bizarre to think that such a network can exist and include politicians and other highly placed members of society. It takes quite some machinery to deflect the outraged attention of an entire country. But they managed it.

 

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 Connerotte:

It is important to highlight the role of the investigative Judge, Jean-Marc Connerotte. He was apparently instrumental in securing the arrest of Dutroux and greatly admired by the public when it became clear he was practically a lone ranger surrounded by criminal incompetence.

In August, Connerotte appealed for other victims of paedophile rings to come forward with testimony.

Thirty-three-year-old Regina Louf responded. She described various orgies she had attended in her youth in detail and named a prominent Belgian businessman, Jean-Michel Nihoul, as the chief organiser. She had also seen a young Dutroux there. She described a house in detail and a murder she had seen at a “sex slave” party in 1984.

Dutroux alleged from the beginning that he was not acting alone, saying that Nihoul was the actual “brains” of the operation. The authorities were determined not to believe him.

Here’s how an Observer reporter, who did an excellent piece in 2002, described her meeting with Nihoul prior to his arrest: “During the course of our meal he, apparently playfully, grabbed me, tickling, and finally pulled me over on to him in the restaurant booth until I had to appeal to my colleagues for rescue.”

He had greeted her by saying he was the “monster of Belgium”.

A playful monster, in other words.

“He has all but dared the state to prosecute him,” said the BBC, “claiming that he is beyond the reach of the law because he has information that, if made public, ‘would bring the government and the entire state down’.”

In custody Nihoul confessed to “organising an orgy at a Belgium chateau, which several government officials, police officers and a former European commissioner attended”.

As victims started coming forward and confessing to sexual abuse in their youth and the same names kept popping up, the notion that Dutroux was acting alone was becoming less and less credible. The media were obviously in full swing by now, with the “House of horror” headlines we can all remember.

By mid-October, the citizens of Belgium were stirred to public outrage as details of the police mismanagement started appearing. “The Justice Ministry was sitting on a politically sensitive list of customers of paedophile videotapes,” said a report in the Los Angeles Times at the time. This list drifted into obscurity.

What tipped public outcry into mass protest was when “the investigative Judge in the Dutroux case, Jean-Marc Connerotte, was dismissed. Many Belgians viewed Connerotte as a hero because he secured the arrest of Marc Dutroux and collected significant evidence against him that would help convict Dutroux and those in his paedophile ring.

“Belgium’s Supreme Court removed Connerotte because he attended a fund-raising dinner, which was organised to help in the search for missing children. It was later decided that his attendance at the fund-raising event caused him to lose his objectivity when investigating the Dutroux case.”

The suspicious dismissal of Connerotte led to a remarkable march. Called the White March, it was the biggest public demonstration in Belgium since the Nüremberg trials. The public were given strong reassurances by the government of a shake-up of the police system and justice triumphing.

But this was not forthcoming. In fact, the opposite tendency was already gaining momentum, silently, away from public statements.

The removal of Connerotte complete, the network set to work at discrediting the testimony of Regina Louf. As mentioned, Louf had supplied details of a murder she had witnessed at a party attended by Dutroux and Nihoul.

Said the Observer: “Christine van Hees’s body had been found in 1984 dumped in the grounds of a disused mushroom farm on the outskirts of Brussels. The farm was later demolished, but in 1996 Louf described to the police team its intricate details, the wallpaper, the sinks, hooks on the ceiling, a network of stairs and adjoining rooms unique to that building.”

A man who grew up at the farm, the son of the former owner, showed the Observer reporter photographs of the house and the mushroom factory. “He said: ‘I have never met Regina Louf. All I know is that she could not have described the house as well as she did unless she’d been there. It was two houses joined together in a strange way. It would be impossible to invent it.’”

For 12 years the unsolved murder of Van Hees gathered dust in the Brussels files under the direction of Judge Van Espen. Two years ago, a Belgian journalist revealed the close relationship between Van Espen and Nihoul and his then wife.

As a lawyer, Van Espen had represented Nihoul’s wife. Van Espen’s sister was the godmother of Nihoul’s child. Yet, when Louf accused these two of the murder, Van Espen saw no conflict of interest and no reason to resign. Nor was he sacked, as Connerotte had been. Instead he was allowed to order the police officers to stay out of the case. Van Espen only resigned as the judge in charge of the mushroom-factory investigation in early 1998 after his relationship with Nihoul was exposed.

A strange co-incidence, isn’t it? No wonder it was so important to discredit Regina Louf, as she had evidence that not only connected Dutroux to Nihoul, but also Nihoul to very prominent judicial officials.

In its response, the network didn’t disappoint, coming out guns blazing.

Observer: “In the spring of 1997, Louf’s interrogators had been sent home without explanation and a new team was assigned to ‘reread’ her testimony. The press was briefed that the previous team had been removed because they had manipulated the evidence of Louf, who was then known by the code name X1. It is a charge which the police team has always vigorously denied and which has never been substantiated.”

But they weren’t finished yet.

“And then the media campaign began. Louf’s name was leaked to the press. The government-owned TV station RTBF began a campaign designed to prove that Dutroux was an ‘isolated pervert’ kidnapping girls for himself, that there was no network, that Nihoul was innocent and Louf was a liar.

“Belgium’s flagship current-affairs television programme, Au Nom de La Loi , floated Louf’s face over a backdrop of crows pecking over debris orchestrated by a Blair Witch-style soundtrack. Her ageing parents appeared as tragic victims of a deranged fantasist, whose false memories had blighted their last years.”

“What the programme makers knew but didn’t say was that the parents had already admitted to police that a family friend in his 40s, Tony van den Bogaert, had had a key to their home and unlimited access to their 12-year-old daughter. Nor did they tell their viewers that Van den Bogaert had himself admitted his relationship with Louf to police.

“Van den Bogaert lives freely on the borders of Belgium and Holland unmolested by the law or the press. Au Nom de La Loi has never attempted to track him down and expose this self-confessed paedophile. Instead it has devoted hours of airtime to destroying the name of his victim, Louf, whose only offence appears to be that she was prepared to testify about the organised abuse she’d suffered as a child.

“This campaign has succeeded. Judges have announced that Louf will not be called as a witness in any future trial of Dutroux or his associates. Her testimony and that of all the 10 witnesses who came forward to Judge Connerotte has been declared worthless.”

“Even the Prosecutor General of the Dutroux case, Anne Thily, seems to have been in on the shady action, saying that Louf was a ‘fantasist’ and had ‘invented everything’.

“Connerotte’s replacement, Judge Langlois, also parked his car in the same garage, because he blatantly refused permission for the hairs gathered in Dutroux’s dungeon to be sent for DNA analysis ‘despite pressure from his prosecutor, Michel Bourlet, who believed that a DNA identification of those hairs might reveal who else was involved’.”

His boss Thily backed him all the way.

“There was no need to get the hairs analysed as no one else entered the cage,” she said. “There was no network so there was no need to look for evidence of one.”

What ingenious rubbish. Bad scriptwriters wouldn’t even be able to come up with something like this.

“In any case,” she continued, “the hairs have all now been analysed — all 5 000.”

And the results of this analysis? asked the Observer reporter.

“Nothing.”

Thily flashed a “triumphant” smile at the reporter.

She concluded: “No evidence of any relevance in the Dutroux affair. Which proves, of course, that Langlois was right all along.”

The Observer reporter had done her homework.

“Sources central to the investigation confirm that to date the hairs have still not been analysed.”

The reporter caught Thily out again when she said that “the bodies were too decomposed to test for DNA”.

“The autopsy states clearly that the bodies were not decomposed,” said the reporter. “Samples were taken. But no one seems to know what has happened to the results.”

So yes, the picture by now had gotten much murkier, with a return to the former “incompetence” that had so tragically been manifested before. The Dutroux case had been hijacked yet again, this time by the chief prosecutor.

Behind the scenes, the murder of potential witnesses was occurring by now. Publicly the cause of death was all declared “suicide”. Things take a rather macabre turn when you hear that even Nihoul’s dentist committed “suicide”.

But back to the official side of the case. Here, under the dodgy auspices of Judge Langlois of “no DNA” fame, the investigation took on another pace altogether. The citizens of Belgium were basically being dealt a collective slap in the face as the trial stalled and crawled along — for another eight years.

Here’s the excuse for the delay.

The Observer: “The official explanation for the delay is that hysterical conspiracy theories forced investigators to search for paedophile networks which didn’t exist.”

Oh, there we go again. Dutroux acted alone.

“But far from being investigated, leads pointing to a network seem rather to have been ignored or buried.”

Even though Dutroux “acted alone”, he still apparently had some friends willing to lend a hand, because in 1997 the prison “allowed Dutroux to leave the building to consult files that would be used in his upcoming trial”. Dutroux used the opportunity and “overpowered a police officer that was guarding him, and escaped for three hours”.

As late as March 18 2004, “a handcuff key was found in Dutroux’s cell, apparently smuggled in a salt bag. Prison authorities were accused to trying to arrange Dutroux’s escape.”

The year 2004 finally saw the sentencing of Dutroux. He obviously — or under the circumstances, perhaps one should say surprisingly — got a life sentence.

His ex-wife Michelle Martin, the woman who stopped feeding the youngsters in the dungeon because she was “afraid of them”, got 30 years. Accomplice businessman Michel Lelievre got 25 years.

The monster of Belgium, Nihoul, got a mere five years. He must have been thrilled. That means, by the end of the year, he’ll be back among us.

The aftermath of this whole affair leaves one with a troubling picture of how dark deeds can flourish in very influential circles. It’s surely little comfort to the bereaved families to know that the full picture of this monstrous episode may never fully emerge.

If indeed Dutroux was part of a much bigger network, as seems likely when one looks at the evidence, then most of its members escaped detection. It seems bizarre to think that such a network can exist and include politicians and other highly placed members of society. It takes quite some machinery to deflect the outraged attention of an entire country. But they managed it.

By 2002, the citizens who had taken part in the march were no longer being hailed but called a “mob” in certain newspapers. The rehabilitation had been exhaustively applied.

Dutroux acted alone! That’s the official version that wants to house itself in our collective memory.