(Dutroux’s accomplice Jean Van Peteghem later tells police that Dutroux filmed and photographed Élisabeth G. naked)
Dec 1985: Dutroux, with accomplices Jean Van Petegham and Michelle Martin (Dutroux’s future wife) abduct Axelle D.
Jan 1986: Dutroux, with 2 accomplices who were never identified, abduct Catherine B.
Feb 1987: Dutroux, Martin and Peteghem are arrested. (Petegham gave a lot of information about himself during conversations with the kidnapped girls who escaped, which helped police identify and arrest Peteghem along with Dutroux and Martin.)
April 1989: Dutroux receives 13.5 years in prison. Peteghem receives 6.5 years. Martin receives 5 years.
1992: Against the advice of both the public prosecutor and the prison psychiatrist who called Marc Dutroux “extremely dangerous” Belgian Minister of Justice, Melchior Wathelet, grants Dutroux an early release after serving only 3 years of his 13.5 year sentence.
And wouldn’t you know it, shortly after Dutroux’s early release girls began disappearing around Dutroux’s properties. By the way, that Minister of Justice who released Dutroux went on to become a judge at the European Court of Justice as well as the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration.
Although Dutroux was unemployed and on welfare, he owned at least six homes and lived a seemingly lavish lifestyle. His high income likely came from trading child slaves, child prostitution, and child p*rnography.
Before his second arrest in 1996, police appeared to have ignored a bevy of accurate tips, including one from Dutroux’s own mother in which she reported that Dutroux was holding girls prisoner in one of his houses. Police also ignored tips from an informant who said Dutroux was “building secret cellars to hold girls before selling them abroad.” The same informant told police that Dutroux offered an unidentified man $5,000 to kidnap girls.
It was later revealed that police even possessed a video of Dutroux’s dungeon being constructed yet did nothing about it.
It’s a miracle Dutroux was even arrested a second time, as there was clearly a well-organized apparatus in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Fortunately, the right people seemed to be in the right place at the right time in August of 1996. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t remain the case for the rest of the sick saga.
The public began to see a much larger picture at play when Marie-France Botte, a highly regarded children’s rights advocate, said the Justice Ministry was sitting on a politically sensitive list of customers of p*dophile videotapes connected to Dutroux.
Outrage grew as more arrests were made and evidence of high-level government/police involvement emerged. One of Dutroux’s many accomplices, businessman Jean-Michel Nihoul, confessed to organizing an orgy at a Belgian chateau attended by government officials, a former European Commissioner, and police officers. Nihoul also boasted that he was beyond the reach of the law because he possessed information that “would bring the Government and the entire state down.”
A Belgian senator at the time said orgies like those organized by Nihoul were part of a larger system “which operates to this day and is used to blackmail the highly placed people who take part.”
At this point the similarities between the Marc Dutroux and Jeffrey Epstein cases should be rather evident to the reader.
In September of 1996, 23 suspects—including nine police officers—were detained and questioned about potential complicity in the crimes and their negligence in the case investigation.
In October 1996, Jean-Marc Connerotte, who was serving as the investigating judge on the Dutroux case was dismissed by the Belgian Supreme Court. For the Belgian public, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Connerotte was viewed by Belgians as a unicorn of sorts: a public law enforcement official that wanted to pursue a legitimate prosecution and not a cover-up.
After Connerotte’s removal, a special team of police officers interviewing the “X” witnesses were also dismissed.
ادامه مطلب ...
The Dutroux Affair: Europe’s Epstein Island
On October 20, 1996, 350,000 Belgians clad in white marched through the streets of Brussels to protest their national government. A government they saw as deliberately protecting abusers, rapists, killers, torturers, and traffickers of children. The criminals they were protecting weren’t just lowlife dregs either, but members of the highest levels of Belgian society.