He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

  

MARC DUTROUX, A PEDOPHILE AND CHILD-KILLER

By Rachael Bell

See No Evil, Hear No Evil...

Throughout history, the people of the largest city in the Wallonian province of Belgium, known as Charleroi, had been forced to engage in countless struggles against French domination in order to preserve their way of life.

Recently, the people of Charleroi and its surrounding towns have been faced with a new enemy. Marc Dutroux, a convicted pedophile, murderer and supposed leader of an international child pornography and prostitution ring, terrorized the city with his shocking crimes, between the mid 1980's and late 1990's.

The Dutroux case gained worldwide attention, not only because of the horrific nature of his crimes, but also the gross negligence and amateurism of police and government officials involved in the investigation.

The Dutroux case caused such upset amongst Belgium's citizens, that it prompted one of the largest peacetime demonstrations since World War II and a shake-up of the Belgian government, causing the resignation and dismissal of several government officials.

The father of three children and working on his second marriage, Dutroux had little difficulty providing financially for his family. Although Dutroux was an unemployed electrician earning welfare from the state, he managed financially by trading stolen cars in Poland and Slovakia, and selling young girls into prostitution throughout Europe. Dutroux owned seven houses in Belgium, most of which stood vacant, except for those houses in which he kept the girls he kidnapped, to be later sold into prostitution or for use in pornography videos.

Dutroux was convicted earlier in 1989 for the rape and abuse of five young girls. During the time Dutroux was serving his sentence, Justice Minister Wathelet allowed the early release of many of Belgium's sex offenders.

Although he was sentenced to 13 years in prison, Dutroux served only three years before being released for good behavior in 1992. It would be another four years before the Belgian Cabinet would finally approve of tightening the laws again, making it more difficult for sex offenders to be released from prison.

Shortly after Dutroux's release from jail, young girls began to disappear around some of the neighborhoods where Dutroux owned houses. Police, during two different occasions, searched the Charleroi house owned by Dutroux. However, the police failed to search the house thoroughly. Hidden in a secret dungeon in the basement were two teenage girls hoping to be found.

CNN reported some years later that during the time of the investigation into the missing girls, vital facts concerning the disappearances were kept from other police investigators. Moreover, during a high point in the investigation, a magistrate working on the case had forgotten to tell her replacement that children were even missing.

Other instances of police incompetence occurred between 1993 and 1996. 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.

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.

Again, these vital clues into the disappearances of the missing girls were ignored. It would be another year before police would finally pay attention to what the informants had been telling them all along. During that valuable time, in which nothing was done to further investigate the leads on Dutroux, other girls disappeared.

Innocence Lost

There was finally a break in the case of the missing girls in August, 1996. While conducting a neighborhood search near the area where police thought that one of the girls had been kidnapped, they came across a person who remembered a suspicious vehicle close to the individual's house. The eyewitness was able to recall some of the numbers on the vehicle's license plate, which eventually led the police to Marc Dutroux.

On August 15, 1996 police raided Dutroux's house where they discovered a soundproof concrete dungeon in the basement. The dungeon was the one of which an eyewitness had told them about the previous year. Within the dungeon they discovered two young girls, who were alive but had been sexually abused.

The two girls were Laetitia Delhez, aged 14, and Sabine Dardenne, aged 12. Both girls had admitted to being sexually assaulted and filmed pornographically by Dutroux. Police found further evidence including at least 300 child pornography videos.

The youngest girl, Delhez, had been kidnapped on August 9, 1996, after being grabbed off the street, thrown into Dutroux's car and drugged. The older of the two, Dardenne, had been kept in the same dungeon as Delhez. However, Dardenne had suffered sexual abuse by Dutroux for a total of two and a half months.

A few days after the discovery of Dardenne and Delhez, police exhumed the bodies of two girls who were not as fortunate to survive in Dutroux's deadly dungeon. Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, two eight-year-old friends who disappeared together in June 1995, were found buried in Dutroux's backyard at another of his houses, in Sars-La-Bouissiere.

Dutroux had told police that the two girls had starved to death between February and March, during the time he was imprisoned for car theft. Dutroux insisted that it was a former accomplice of his named Bernard Weinstein who was at fault for the girls' deaths, stating that he failed to feed them while he was imprisoned.

He also said it was Weinstein who kidnapped the children, supposedly for a commission from Dutroux. Angered that Weinstein allowed the two little girls to die, he admitted to giving him barbiturates and burying him alive next to Russo and Lejeune. Weinstein's body was found alongside the two girls.

Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune were buried shortly after their discovery, in white coffins side by side, during a private ceremony. Thousands paid their respects to the two friends who lived and died together.

While in police custody, Dutroux and accomplice Michel Lelievre had allegedly admitted kidnapping two other girls who had gone missing a year earlier from a camping trip at Ostend, a Belgian resort.

The two girls, An Marchal, aged 19, and Eefje Lambreks, aged 17, were found at another house owned by Dutroux, several weeks after the discovery of Russo and Lejeune. The two girls had been buried under concrete in a shed next to Dutroux's house. Police also discovered Dutroux's former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, had occupied the house for three years.

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.

In September, 1996, nine police officers in Charleroi were detained for questioning regarding their involvement and possible negligence in the Dutroux investigation. Also during that month, Marleen De Cockere was arrested on criminal charges of conspiracy in connection with Dutroux's crime ring. De Cockere was described by police as the love interest of Jean Nihoul. Seven other people were later arrested in connection to the child-sex ring.

Public Outrage

There was no doubt that had Dutroux not been released early and had police acted on tips from informants about his activities, four girls would be alive today and other young girls might have been saved from being sold into prostitution or child pornography.

This realization caused a massive outcry from the Belgian public, demanding an inquiry into the handling of the Dutroux investigation, a change in laws and radical changes to the political and judicial system.

Public outrage sparked a call for Belgium to reinstate the death penalty that had been discontinued several months before the discovery of Dutroux's first victims. The public further demanded a tightening of the parole criteria for those convicted of child sex offenses. This was finally implemented in 1998.

The Dutroux case was the main subject of an international conference in Stockholm, which was organized by the United Nations' Children's Fund on August 28, 1996. Foreign Minister Erik Derycke emotionally called on all nations to combat the exploitation of children by "enhancing mutual law enforcement and judicial cooperation," as quoted in Belgium Today.

It was stressed that it was necessary for all agencies to work together and fight against child abuse on all levels. It was announced at the conference that measures would be taken to ensure this, by calling on EU Member States to combine forces among the countries by ratifying EUROPOL and prioritizing cases related to those involving children.

Belgian citizens had finally had enough by mid-October, 1996. Belgians were furious not only with the mismanagement of the investigation into the missing girls, but were even more outraged 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 pedophile ring.

Belgium's Supreme Court removed Connerotte because he attended a fund raising dinner, which was organized 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.

It was the dismissal of Connerotte and the incompetence of the police that prompted one of the largest peacetime marches in Belgium's history since World War II. In late October, more than 300,000 people dressed in white, a symbol of innocence, marched throughout the city of Brussels demanding serious reforms within the political and judicial system.

Belgians were further angered at the possibility of there being a government cover-up. Confidence in the Belgian government was at a low point. Throughout Belgium, there were many who walked away from their work for the day in protest over the recent events.

A car assembly plant was left vacant when its workers walked away in anger; some cities came to a stand still when train operators refused to work; and the families of the victims called for a general strike. It was time for the government to take action and make some of the necessary changes that were suggested in order to restore public order and confidence.

Belgium's Prime Minister Dehaene was quoted as saying, "This is a strong signal which we cannot ignore." He further stated that the movement was good because it would speed up reforms. Prime Minister Dehaene promised not only would he see to it that there would be reforms in the justice system, but he would also see the Dutroux investigation pursued to the end. Even Belgium's King Albert spoke up about the Dutroux case and called for reforms.

Police Faulted

During April of 1997, a parliamentary committee investigating the handling of the Dutroux case said that the young girls who were murdered might have been alive today, if the police had not made so many mistakes during the investigation into the pedophile ring.

The committee further recommended that Brussels prosecutor Benoit Dejemeppe be dismissed because he failed to do his job properly. Other officials were found responsible for the deaths of the girls.

Investigators were charged with ignoring warnings by informants during a crucial stage during the investigation, mistreating the parents of the victims and failing to pass on vital information between prosecutors and police. Moreover, the report called for, "an overhaul of Belgium's police, replacing the current three services -- the local police, judicial police and the national gendarmerie - with one local and one national service." Further details concerning the hearings, including suggested government reforms, were listed in a report of over 300 pages, which was handed out to party leaders.

The police department suffered further humiliation when in April, 1998 Marc Dutroux overpowered a police officer that was guarding him, and escaped for three hours. The prison, incredibly enough, had allowed Dutroux to leave the building to consult files that would be used in his upcoming trial. While on one of his leaves, he struggled with a guard, stealing his gun in the process and finally taking off in a stolen car.

Dutroux was eventually captured and he was no longer permitted to prepare for his trial outside of the prison. Dutroux's escape prompted the resignation of three officials, Belgium's State Police Chief, Lt. Gen. Willy Deridder, and the justice and interior ministers. It would be another month before the government and opposition parties would finally agree to the restructuring of the police and justice system.

Dutroux and his accomplices were scheduled for trial in 2000 for deaths of the four girls and the pedophile ring operation.

On and On and On

On March 20, 2000, BBC Online reported that Mark Dutroux, clad in handcuffs, a bullet-proof vest and escorted by 10 police officers, was transported to a courtroom in the Belgian town of Neufchateau on charges relating to his brief escape from custody two years ago.

His appearance lasted for an hour with Dutroux admitting that he had escaped but claimed that he had only done so to tell the media his version of the story. Judges and lawyers on the case decided to put back the trial until May, 2000.

Since Dutroux's escape, two government ministers have resigned and a prosecutor in charge of the case has committed suicide. Dutroux may face up to10 years in prison if convicted of theft and assault during his escape.

Two months later, on June 19, 2000, Marc Dutroux was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of theft and assault in connection with his escape from custody, which is not a crime under Belgian law. BBC Online also reported that the families of Dutroux's young victims continue to wait as the investigations into the murders drag on.

A further BBC report the following August detailed how Belgium authorities were taking steps to prevent the circulation of a list of convicted or suspected pedophiles living in Belgium after a small French-language magazine in Luxembourg called The Investigator decided to print a list of fifty names. Although a Belgian court issued an emergency injunction against the paper, copies of the magazine containing the list had already been posted to subscribers in Belgium.

Editor of The Investigator, Jean Nicolas, claimed the decision was intended to warn the public and that no photos of the alleged pedophiles or their victims had been published. He told the Belga news agency that the list had been obtained from the files of Jacques Langlois, the investigating magistrate in the Dutroux case. However, a Belgian court termed the decision an abuse of human rights and passed an injunction indicating that Nicolas would face a fine of $20,000 for each copy that contained the list.

In February 2001 BBC reported that Marc Dutroux had appeared in court in southern Belgium alleging that the Belgian State is violating his human rights. He is demanding that he be released from solitary confinement, undergo fewer body searches, and be allowed to sleep uninterrupted.

Dutroux's lawyer has requested that a fine be imposed on the state if it failed to improve the conditions in which it holds him and that the judge inspect Dutroux's specially constructed cell.

The state claims that Dutroux is given special attention for his own protection. Thousands of spectators surrounded the court to express their grief and disillusionment with Belgian authorities' failure to save the girls he is accused of viciously raping and murdering.

The trial is postponed again and again which enrages the victims' families and ignites anger and disgust among the Belgian people.

Confession?

On January 22 2002, CNN Online reported that an "unauthorized televised interview" with Marc Dutroux during which Dutroux allegedly admitted he was guilty of locking up two young girls who starved to death in his cellar. The "confession," released by a television journalist, was captured on a tape recorder that was smuggled into Dutroux's cell by a Belgian senator.

On the tape, Dutroux allegedly says: "I kept Julie and Melissa captive at my place, so I'm not innocent. I kept An and Eefje (teenagers An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks) captive at my place, so I'm not innocent. I'm absolutely guilty."

The taped "confession," is a dramatic departure for Dutroux as he has consistently professed his innocence of the 1996 murder charges despite having served 13 years in prison on a previous charge of raping five girls.

On hearing the interview, Paul Marchal, the father of alleged Dutroux victim An Marchal, told Reuters: "I didn't want to hear it anymore. I can't listen to his voice. It makes me so sick."

The father of victim Melissa Russo told The Guardian newspaper: "It's indecent. He says that he kept Julie and Melissa, so that's rape, kidnapping and sadism for starters. He talks about a network when we are already at the end of the investigation. It is now up to the judge to draw up the (trial) plan with what he has. If he says there is a network but offers no further details, nothing will change. But if he cooperates then maybe the investigation will be restarted."

VTM, the Flemish television channel that ran the interview, would not comment on whether Dutroux knew a journalist was interviewing him.

However, in excerpts VTM made available before the interview, Dutroux said: "I was in regular contact with people belonging to that network. But the justice system doesn't want to investigate this lead."

Dutroux's trial, which has been postponed several times, was delayed again while forensic tests were carried out on 6,000 hair samples taken from the basement cell of his house. These tests will attempt to determine if the victims had other visitors.

After Seven Years, A Trial

It seems amazing that it has taken seven years to bring Dutroux to trial, with all the delays and postponements, but now it is scheduled to begin on March 1, 2004. Facing trial with Dutroux is his wife, Michele Martin, 45, businessman Jean-Michel Nihoul, 63. and Michel Lelievre. Not only are Dutroux and his three alleged accomplices on trial, but also the entire criminal justice system in Belgium.

Expatica.com wrote in January, 2004 that a survey published by a leading Belgian newspaper found that almost 60 percent of people living in Belgium have no faith in the criminal justice system.

William Langley of Telegraph News wrote: "If the stakes are high for the defendants, they are no lower for the Belgian government. For already the Dutroux case has exposed a scarcely believable degree of official incompetence and complacency 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. An assessment made prior to his release stated that he was no longer a danger to the public."

Like most pedophiles, after his release, Dutroux went right back to his outrageous crimes. The police were given very specific tips, but there was no competent follow up, despite his criminal record.

The most glaring police failure occurred when they finally got around to searching Dutroux's house where two girls were being held prisoner and failed to find the girls that were in the house at that time.

Despite the biggest judicial investigation in the nation's history, almost no one in Belgium believes the full story of Dutroux's activities will ever be known, even after the trial. The trial is expected to last three months and some 600 witnesses are expected to be called. The Belgian justice minister believes that the trial may cost over 4.5 million Euros.

The Dutroux arrest revealed monumental levels of police bungling and saw public confidence in Belgium's law enforcement agencies plummet to an all-time low.

But according to prosecuting magistrate Damien Vandermeersch, far from improving the way they work, since 1996, Belgium's national and local police forces have actually gotten worse. Vandermeersch said that a series of recent police forms have left officers hamstrung by bureaucracy and drowning in a sea of paperwork.

Expatica sums it up this way: "The impression this case gives is that justice in Belgium is not so much blind as totally headless".

A Trial to Remember

The long awaited trial opened on March 1, 2004. Before it began, Dutroux had already told the media that he was just a pawn in a network of pedophiles and that Michel Nihoul, also on trial, was the brains behind the network.

The following day, the prosecutor, Michel Bourlet, seemed to agree that Dutroux was not acting on his own, but was part of a network, along with Nihoul, colleague Michel Lelievre and his former wife, Michelle Martin. However, Bourlet did not suggest that the network was any larger than the individuals who had already been charged with Dutroux.

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. He accused his co-defendants of murdering Eefje and An, as well as two other girls.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph U.K. reported that Judge Jacques Langlois, who had compiled an enormous body of research on the case, testified that over the years, Dutroux honed his stalking, abduction, rape and brainwashing skills.

Langlois also testified that Dutroux's ex-wife, Michelle Martin, left two girls to starve while Dutroux was in prison. He said that "Ms Martin had told him she had been asked by her husband to feed Lejeune and Russo when he was jailed for four months for car theft in late 1995." But she was afraid that the girls would attack her.

March 4 brought the testimony of 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 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.

Connerotte was removed from the case after attending a dinner for the families of the victims, which instigated the protest march of some 300,000 people in Brussels. He had rescued two of the girls from the dungeon under Dutroux's home. When he tried to get them to come out of the dungeon, they were afraid that the pedophile group was coming to collect them and clung to Dutroux for protection.

"They thanked and embraced him, which is truly disgusting," Connerotte claimed. "That shows how far they had been conditioned."

The judge blamed the local police in the city of Charleroi for neglect and incompetence in their investigation and lack of follow-up which resulted in the starvation deaths of Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, both 8 years old.

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.

On April 19, one of Dutroux's rape and kidnap victims, Sabine Dardenne, 20, told the court of her ordeal with the defendant when she was 12 years old. She had been held captive for 80 days in Dutroux's dungeon and vehemently rejected his apology given in court.

CNN.com reported, "As Dutroux watched with a smirk from the dock, she told the court he had made her believe her parents had abandoned her after refusing to pay a ransom for her release. She said Dutroux had posed as her protector, telling her he was keeping her from his boss who wanted to kill her."

On April 20, when Dardenne returned to a second day of testimony, CNN.com wrote that she "objected that Dutroux implied he had kidnapped another victim in 1996 to find her a friend."

"Is it not possible to silence this man?" she asked.

When Dutroux said he had protected her from a pedophile network, she countered, "So, if I understand you, I should be thankful?"

Another of Dutroux's victims that lived to testify against him testified that day. Laetitia Delhez, 22, was also rescued from the cellar along with Dardenne.

Defense lawyer Ronny Baudewyn was also outraged at the comments that Dutroux made to and about his victims.

On April 21, Expatica.com reported that co-defendant Michel Nihoul, a businessman, emphatically denied that he was in any way involved with Dutroux's crimes. Unlike Dutroux, Nihoul is not imprisoned during his trial.

The trial is expected to last into May.

Conviction

One week after Delhez and Dardenne harrowing testimonies, the two women returned to the dungeon where they were held captive, beaten and repeatedly raped by Dutroux before being freed in 1996. Accompany the women were several judges, court officials, lawyers, family members of the victims and Dutroux. According to the BBC article "Dutroux Victims Return to Cell", the women returned to the house in Marcinelle to "come to terms" with their ordeal. They also wanted those present to understand the horrific conditions in which they were held captive and what they experienced.

Back in court, Dutroux continued to deny that he was a murderer, placing responsibility on his alleged accomplices, Michel Lelievre, Michel Nihoul and his ex-wife, Michelle Martin. However, Dutroux did confess to the rape and kidnapping charges against him for which he expressed his "sincere regret." Yet, for the victims it was already too late.

On June 14, 2004, the jury, consisting of eight women and four men were sent out to deliberate at the end of a three-month- trial. The jurists convened at a fortified Arlon army barracks to review approximately 400,000 pages of evidence, including the testimonies of over 500 witnesses. Moreover, the judge gave them 243 questions to evaluate, pertaining to the criminal charges against Dutroux, Martin, Lelievre and Nihoul.

It took a little more than three days for the jury to come back with a verdict. On June 17^th, Dutroux was found guilty of kidnapping and raping all six girls. He was also convicted of murdering An Marchel and Eefje Lambrecks, as well as his alleged accomplice Bernard Weinstein.

Additionally, Lelievre was also found guilty of kidnapping but managed to escape murder charges. The jury has not yet come to a decision on the fate of Martin, who later admitted at trial to starving 8-year-old Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune to death. There is a strong chance that she will be condemned for the children's deaths.

According to the BBC article "Child Killer Convicted in Belgium," the jury could not agree on a verdict concerning the case of Nihoul. In both his and Martin's cases, the jury was sent back to further review evidence and complete the 243 questions handed down by the judge. A verdict is expected sometime around June 24^th, around the same time Dutroux's sentence will be handed down.

The defendants face a maximum sentence of life in prison. However, they could be eligible for parole after 10 years on good behavior. Belgium has no death penalty, yet the Dutroux case has prompted many to rethink capital punishment laws. It is clear that there is no place for people like Dutroux in today's society.

June 22, 2004 brought a life sentence to Dutroux. He was also "put at the government's disposition," which means that if he were released at some point in the future, the government could send him back to prison. Michelle Martin was sentenced to 30 years in jail and Michel Lelievre got 25 years.

Michel Nihoul was sentenced to 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.

CrimeLibrary.com

14 June 2004: The jury retires to consider its verdict.

17 June 2004: Dutroux convicted of murder and leading a child kidnap gang.