..
Three stories plus a couple of links to fill out some of the questions left behind from the most popular post on this blog: The Great Belgium Pedophile/Torture/Murder Scandal and Its Cover-up Part II.
Check the dates published by the sources to keep things in perspective.
..
300,000 Protest Belgium’s Handling of Pedophile Case
By DEAN E. MURPHY
OCT. 21, 1996, 12 AM
L.A. TIMES STAFF WRITER
BRUSSELS — Capping an extraordinary week of public demonstrations, about 300,000 people marched through the streets of the Belgian capital Sunday to protest the authorities’ handling of a highly charged pedophile scandal and to draw attention to the unknown fate of about 10 missing children.
“I want to thank everyone here for paying homage to our little princess,” Carine Russo, mother of an 8-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and slain by a convicted pedophile, told the solemn assembly. “I ask only one thing, that all children in the world are treated like little princes and princesses and never know . . . hell on Earth.”
Authorities said the orderly and sometimes teary crowd, carrying white flowers and balloons as symbols of innocence and purity, was among the largest in Belgian history. It surpassed the size of protests during the tense Cold War years of the early 1980s, when peace activists across Europe took to the streets to oppose the deployment of U.S. missiles on the Continent.
This time, however, most of the marchers were first-time protesters moved by their hearts, not by their politics--mothers, fathers, teenagers and young children horrified by an unfolding case of murder and child pornography that has gripped the country since August.
Even veterans of other demonstrations--including the legendary social upheavals of 1968--said none carried the moral grounding and genuine grass-roots concern that presided at Sunday’s event like the guiding hand of a watchful parent.
“To be here gives you a strange feeling in your heart,” said Hafida Zouid, a Brussels mother who made the four-hour march with her 4-year-old daughter. “What happened to those children has given us all goose bumps. This is the only way we know how to express our feelings.”
During a short address at the start of the rally, Nabela Benaissa, whose young sister has been missing for four years, quietly captured the gravity of the moment when she tucked away her intended speech.
“I had a thousand things to tell you, but my emotions are too strong,” she said. “We had a little bird that we loved, and one day she left the nest, and since then we have been waiting for her to come back.”
Four girls were slain, two others rescued alive and about 10 children are still missing in connection with a child pornography ring allegedly headed by convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux, who police say committed his most recent crimes after being released from prison early because of good behavior.
It was not a pornography ring; it was a child trafficking ring. Dutroux provided children for wealthy and powerful people in Belgium. He was protected by those same people and was released early from prison, probably because of the influence of those people, and possibly so he could return to his business of supplying pedophiles in the government, church, and even royalty with fresh game.
The Dutroux case has haunted the consciences of ordinary Belgians since it was disclosed that two of the victims starved to death in an underground dungeon nine months after disappearing near their homes and despite repeated public appeals by their parents for an aggressive campaign to find them.
But the inward questioning has been increasingly overshadowed by intense rage toward the country’s political and judicial systems, which have come under scrutiny because of allegations of incompetence, corruption and complicity in the pedophile case. Recently, there have been reports in the Belgian media that investigators are pursuing evidence that might link senior political figures to Dutroux.
The enormous public anger began spilling into the streets last week when a respected state investigator was removed from the case by the country’s top court.
It was ruled that investigating magistrate Jean-Marc Connerotte, who was instrumental in Dutroux’s arrest in August, had compromised his impartiality by accepting a spaghetti dinner and a fountain pen during a fund-raising event last month for families of missing children.
The decision, defended by many legal experts as following the letter of the law, set off a flurry of spontaneous protests by ordinary people, who saw Connerotte as one of the few heroic players in the affair and the court ruling as evidence of a judicial system out of step with real justice.
Auto workers blocked roads. Bus drivers refused to drive. Postal workers delivered sacks of spaghetti to judicial officials. And firefighters in Liege, where much of the scandal has been centered, turned their water jets on the Palace of Justice.
“When justice goes bad, people have to do what they have to do, just like in the old times,” said Johan, a 28-year-old unemployed construction worker who would not give his last name because he is related to a main suspect in the pedophile case.
“If you are going to rule by the letter of the law, then it should be that way for everyone, not just working Belgians with no political connections.”
The political fallout has not been lost on the country’s rulers. In a rare break with accepted protocol limiting his involvement in politics, Belgian King Albert II hosted a seminar on child abuse Friday, during which he called for a “moral revival and a profound change in our country.”
After the rally on Sunday, Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene met with leaders of the protest, promising to push for several significant reforms in the Belgian justice system that could make a repeat of the Dutroux affair less likely, including depoliticizing the method for choosing magistrates.
The prime minister also pledged that the Dutroux investigation will be pursued “to its end” without any political interference and that disciplinary action will be taken against anyone found to have bungled the case.
The political reaction was politely welcomed by parents of the missing and dead children, but it was seen as too little and too late.
“We won’t stop until there is a change in the mentality of the public, which is already happening, and especially among the people who are making decisions about our children,” Russo, whose daughter starved in the dungeon, said in an interview.
“This is all about our children and about citizens who have at last realized they need to express themselves as citizens.”
Belgian ‘Monster’ Marc Dutroux heaps horror on child victims’ parents
Andrew Byrne, Brussels
Sunday August 26 2018, 12.01am BST,
The Sunday Times
Dutroux, who kept his victims in a dungeon, was arrested after kidnapping Sabine Dardenne
AFP/GETTY
Belgium’s notorious multiple child murderer Marc Dutroux is stirring up pain and fury by making a public show of remorse to the parents of his victims in the hope of getting out of jail.
Dutroux, now 61, was known as the “Monster of Charleroi” when he was convicted in 2004 of the murder of four girls who were raped and then perished in dungeons he had dug under houses he owned.
His case drew worldwide attention when it emerged that bungled police investigations — and his previous early release from prison after a multiple rape conviction — had enabled him to go on kidnapping, torturing and killing his young victims.
His lawyer, Bruno Dayez, said he had drafted letters on Dutroux’s behalf that will be sent to the parents of his victims this week. They will form a key part of Dutroux’s eventual application for conditional release and represent “an outstretched hand” to the parents, offering to answer any questions they may still have.
The secret cell in which Dardenne and another kidnap victim were shackled and raped
“Dutroux will respond positively to the fullest extent possible,” Dayez said, adding that he had contacted the victims’ families on Dutroux’s behalf to discover their wishes.
The reaction has been unconcealed rage. Carine Russo, whose daughter Melissa was eight when she was kidnapped, described the letters as part of a bullying campaign. “We want to carry on with our lives, but we can’t when they rub salt in our open wounds. Not even salt — Dayez adds acid into the mix,” she wrote in Le Soir, the Brussels newspaper.
During his trial Dutroux claimed he had been the victim of an “organised lynching” and that the “true assassins” remained at large, protected by powerful political forces.
Dayez hinted that while Dutroux was expressing some remorse now, he would still seek to cast some blame on other people.
“Dutroux accepts full responsibility for his own actions. He believes, however, that he is not solely responsible for what happened and that others have escaped the consequences of their own actions,” the lawyer said.
Public anger remains so intense, more than 20 years after the killings, that Dayez has been placed under police protection after receiving an influx of hate mail and other threats since he took on his client.
“Part of the public cannot understand anything about my approach,” Dayez said. “They are unable to acknowledge that Dutroux can be defended.”
Child trafficking in high places
Belgians have painful memories not just of Dutroux’s crimes but also of inexplicable decisions by the authorities that sparked fears of a secret child trafficking network protected by powerful figures.
The sequence of events remains barely believable. Dutroux, an electrician and petty criminal who owned a number of rundown properties, was well known to the police in Charleroi, his home town, before he became a sex killer.
He was jailed for 13½ years in 1989 for abducting and raping five young girls — but was released only three years later in 1992.
His mother wrote repeatedly to the police, warning them that he was capable of murder and was imprisoning victims in his basement. Many of her letters went unanswered.
In 1995 Dutroux kidnapped Russo and her friend Julie Lejeune while they were going for a walk near Liège.
He filmed himself sexually abusing them in one of his dungeons where they subsequently died of starvation while he was held by police on unrelated car crime charges. Police searched the house twice but failed to find the girls, despite hearing muffled voices.
An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, were abducted and drugged in 1996 after leaving a tram in Ostend. They were found buried in the garden of one of Dutroux’s properties.
Two other girls, Laetitia Delhez, 14, and Sabine Dardenne, 12, survived because Dutroux was arrested soon after he kidnapped them — but not before they had been shackled to a cellar wall, psychologically tortured and raped.
Delhez and Dardennes
His arrest and the discovery of bodies unleashed a wave of public fury, prompting a mass demonstration in Brussels and a parliamentary inquiry. The anger was compounded when Dutroux, while awaiting trial, escaped with a gun for several hours in 1998.
The murderer’s former lawyer, Julien Pierre, told the Belgian weekly Soir Mag in 2016 that Dutroux had claimed there was a utopian plan behind his crimes.
“My idea was to carry out mass kidnappings of children and then to create, in a mine shaft, a sort of underground city where good, harmony and security would prevail,” Dutroux had said, according to Pierre.
"Good, harmony and security", which one of those would child rape and torture fall under?
For Dutroux’s application for release to be successful, he must convince five judges, the prison management, the public prosecution service and psychiatrists.
His former wife, Michelle Martin, who had been convicted of being his accomplice, was released to live in a convent in 2012, provoking widespread public anger.
"Released to live in a convent", they still do that in Europe? Apparently, she wasn't a good accomplice if she allowed two young girls to starve to death.
Dutroux must never be allowed to walk the streets again. However, he has tons of information that should be extracted, concerning his customers in high society in Belgium. It appears few people want to open that can of worms.
Marc Dutroux presents a "high" risk of recidivism: "The preliminary psychiatric report is even worse for him than what I feared!"
By Françoise de Halleux
September 10, 2020
EXCLUSIVE. The three psychiatrists, appointed by the Brussels Criminal Court to assess the dangerousness of Marc Dutroux, have just submitted their preliminary report: they conclude that there is a high risk of recurrence. This should seriously jeopardize his application for parole.
Marc Dutroux presents a "high" risk of recidivism: "The preliminary psychiatric report is even worse for him than what I feared!"
“I confirm: my client's preliminary psychiatric report is bad and even very bad for him. Even worse than I feared! », Says Marc Dutroux's lawyer, Me Bruno Dayez. To the point of changing strategy and giving up a request for release? Here is what the lawyer tells us .
This report, of approximately 50 pages, is an assessment of the dangerousness of Dutroux. The expert psychiatrists Pierre Oswald, Samuel Leistedt and Johan Kalonji, met the person concerned on several occasions in the prison of Nivelles. Three psychologists did the same for technical support.
Many more details are added at EuroNews, which I am not able to reproduce.
No comments:
Post a Comment