The reality of protected child abuse and snuff networks

[Dig]

Beyond the Dutroux Affair
The reality of protected child abuse and snuff networks
the victim-witnesses | the investigators | the accused | the apparently assassinated
http://www.pehi.eu/dutroux/Belgian_X_dossiers_of_the_Dutroux_affair.htm
Warning: The information in this article is not suited for anyone below the age of 18, as it involves extreme sexual violence against children. A certain amount of normally-illegal visual evidence (it is censored) has been included.
Belgium's biggest secret.

"What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. This is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face."

- Former CIA director and Cercle member William Colby giving advice to his friend senator John DeCamp, urging him to quit his investigations into the Franklin child abuse affair and to write a book about his experiences (The Franklin Coverup, 2nd edition, foreword).

"From East Belfast's Kincora Boys' Home, via Leicestershire, Staffordshire and London, to the children's homes of Clwyd, we have witnessed 25 years of cover-up. Cover-up, not to protect the
innocent but to protect the regularly named elements of the British establishment who surface whenever widespread evidence of child abuse is exposed. From the public schools right through to the Catholic and Anglican churches, child abuse has been allowed a special place of sanctuary... Social workers, police, security services, local and national political figures remain the common factors in the fall-out from the [child abuse] inquiries... In case after case the cycle is described - a child is 'taken into care', then abused in a home, handed on to an outside pedophile ring and out on to the rent-boy/prostitution circuit beyond, if they live that long... Journalists find themselves battling first with authority, then with the libel laws, to publish the truth about a vast web of abuse."
- June 6, 1996, The Guardian, 'True scandal of the child abusers'. These lines were written by the author of the article and are not quotes.

"I look at him [inspector De Baets], and I really want to believe him, but somewhere, I know that I will never make it. The people I have known are too powerful, too influential, too untouchable. I realize that; the investigators not yet."
- Victim-witness Regina Louf (X1) from Belgium describes her thoughts when she first began to testify in secret in September 1996 (1998, 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 203).

Part 1    Foreword
Part 2    Where things began: Dutroux's reign of terror
Part 3    Failure to catch Dutroux
Part 4    Nihoul
Part 5    Victim-witnesses come forward
Part 6    Questioning the alters
Part 7    A sniff of extreme abuse
Part 8    Girls X1 had witnessed being murdered
Part 9    Who backed up the claims of X1
Part 10    Dismantling the investigation
Part 11    Questionable and extremely compromised researchers
Part 12    The accused in finance
Part 13    The accused in (private) intelligence and politics
Part 14    The US connection continued
Part 15    More on the Satanic link and the biggest picture possible
Part 16    Conclusion


"Imagine, everywhere you hear that story about a blackmail dossier in which organizations of the extreme right are in the possession of pictures and videos on which a number of prominent people in and around Brussels have sex with young girls; minors it is said. The existence of this dossier has always been vehemently denied. Until it was proven that testimonies and videos of this affair indeed were in the possession of the police services. An officer of the judicial police (Marnette, H.G.) denied the existence of these videos, while afterwards this person's superior admitted that they did exist, that they were kept with the judicial police in Brussels, but that they were completely worthless. Strange, because this stuff needs to be deposited with the registrar and not be kept in the possession of some police service. Subsequently, examining magistrate Jean-Marie Schlicker confirms that this dossier does indeed exist, but that he wishes not to give any testimonies about it. The at first non-existing dossier turns out to exist. The videos without substance then turn out to be interesting enough after all to be handed over to the examining magistrate tasked with the investigation into the Gang of Nijvel. But this person subsequently is afraid to testify about that! What do you think that has been going on here?"
-September 1989, Congressman Hugo Coveliers, secretary of the special investigating committee tasked with evaluating the way gangsterism and terrorism is combated in Belgium (1988-1990), to Humo magazine (1990, Hugo Gijsels, 'De Bende & Co', p. 133-134). Coveliers became a senator in 1995.

"When I saw in how much trouble he got [sergeant Michel Clippe, who had convinced her to testify] and how my own dossier evolved, I decided to quit. In any case, even back then you could already see how the people surrounding De Baets were collectively being stonewalled. They didn't stand a chance."
- Victim-witness X2, a police officer. Because of her job she recognized many judges and attorneys among her former abusers. Certain names and details were also given by X1 and other witnesses (1999, 'De X-dossiers', p. 321).

"Only very few reporters are still listening to me, listen to my cry for help. They are not allowed to publish or broadcast. They all tell me that they are stonewalled by their bosses... The aggression of some of the magazines, newspapers and tv programs is frightening. This is not normal anymore, this is a war in which the victims have become disposable waste."
- Victim-witness Regina Louf (X1) about the media's reaction to the initially open-minded reports about the X1 case by De Morgen and Panorama in January 1998 (1998, 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 257).

Foreword
A number of Dutch and French language books have appeared on the Dutroux affair since 1996, with one standing out above the rest. This is the generally hard-to-get 1999 book 'The X-Dossiers', written by respected investigative journalists Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, Annemie Bulté and Douglas De Coninck. Page after page they explain how the most important aspects of the whole Dutroux investigation, in which Dutroux ultimately became a minor detail, were manipulated and finally discarded. The book presented the most powerful case possible for a massive cover up. However, there was one thing the authors couldn't do and that was to publish the names of those who had been accused by a whole range of witnesses. The reason is obvious: if the authors would have published these names they would have been paying damages for the rest of their lives..

A lot of information in this article can be found in the book 'The X-Dossiers', with the primary difference being that all the names of the alleged abusers have been included. This has become possible because the Dutroux dossier, including the testimonies of the X-witnesses, were leaked to a number of reporters in the late 1990s. Both the final Dutroux dossier, which has largely been sanitized from any important information, and a summary of official reports from August 1996 to May-June 1997 have been used by this author to verify the claims made in a number of books and to find out the identities of the alleged abusers. Seeing the names and reading the biographies can be quite a shock initially, but it will also clarify how a cover up of this magnitude was possible.

The power of the Dutroux affair and its X-Dossiers is that it will enable anyone to see how a state can be controlled and undermined by a cabal that is able to place its own members in crucial positions in any investigation that might lead to its own exposure. The question of why the majority of the media is so cooperative is the only aspect that cannot be fully explained in this article, although it can be shown that the media is willingly working with official investigators in manipulating and debunking all aspects of an investigation that are not appreciated by the cabal.

Some might find it unethical to publish the names of mere suspects, especially when talking about child abuse. The author fully agrees with this argument, but only under normal circumstances in which an investigation is carried out the way it should be. This has not happened in the Dutroux affair, in which the honest, competent and dedicated researchers, together with the most important witnesses, have unjustly been persecuted, harassed, tarred and feathered by the media and the judiciary, with help from some of the alleged child abusers. That's why the investigation, which has been dead and buried for many years now, should be taken public. And let's not forget that the X-Dossiers involve a whole range of witnesses whose claims overlap and in many cases involve highly specific details that have been verified by detectives. It can also be argued that the mainstream press was anything but discrete in late 1996 when they published the names of the politicians Elio Di Rupo and Jean-Pierre Grafe as alleged child abusers. The evidence these claims were based on was meager to say the least and many times less powerful than the combined testimonies of the X-witnesses. But, of course, the purpose of this event was not to inform the public; it was an effort to discredit the rumors about high level involvement in child abuse networks. It was known that sooner or later the X-witnesses would reach the news and this was one of the pre-emptive strikes against these witnesses.

Several appendixes have been attached to this article. Most of these appendixes, which include long lists of accused, victims, investigators and apparently assassinated, were more or less finished before a beginning was made with writing this article. It has actually taken about 1,5 years to fill in all the biographies and translate the necessary passages of all the Dutch and French sources used, but this was definitely worth the effort as it gave tremendous insight in what has been going on in Belgium since the late 1970s, and provided some perspective to reports that have come from the United States and elsewhere. It might be the last thing you'd expect from a country with only ten million inhabitants, but Belgium's history of internal subversion takes quite a while to get through.

Where things began: Dutroux's reign of terror
In the afternoon of August 13, 1996, progress was finally made. A number of individuals were arrested on strong suspicions that they had been responsible for a wave of kidnappings of young girls. Within days these suspicions were backed up with solid evidence, but the arrest of Dutroux and some of his associates turned out to be only the beginning of the biggest scandal in Belgian history.

The media attention had begun in June 1995 with the disappearance of two 8 year old girls, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo. Almost exactly two months later, the 17 year old An Marchal and the 19 year old Eefje Lambrecks went missing. Additional media attention was drawn to the latter case as the last thing these girls did was visit the show of Rasti Rostelli, a prominent magician, in which they had been hypnotized. Needless to say, the affair ended the career of the magician, even though he had almost immediately been cleared as a suspect. In late 1995, the BOB (Belgian FBI and branch of the gendarmerie) largely ceased to investigate the case. However, the disappearance of An and Eefje remained prominent, because a foundation named Marc & Corinne, set up several years earlier and named after two teenagers who had been brutally murdered, used its limited funds to spread posters of the girls' faces all over Belgium and the Netherlands. In the end this made no difference; the girls weren't found, nor those responsible, and in May 1996 history repeated itself. This time the 12 year old Sabine Dardenne disappeared, and again the BOB was unable to find the kidnappers or the girl. People became more worried for their children with every kidnapping. Confidence in the police and judiciary, traditionally already quite low, began sinking to new depths.

Things changed later that year. On Friday, August 9, 1996 the 14 year old Laetitia Delhez disappeared in Bertrix, a town located in the district of Neufchateau, near the border of France and Luxemburg. Michel Bourlet, prosecutor of the king in Neufchateau, was tasked with the case and appointed examining magistrate Jacques Langlois to coordinate the investigation. When Langlois left for vacation the following Monday, Bourlet replaced him with his close colleague Jean-Marc Connerotte. The latter duo had already become well known in 1994 for not being allowed to solve the murder on Andre Cools, a socialist politician.

The same monday that Connerotte took over from Langlois, BOB adjutant Jean-Pierre Peters reported a breakthrough in the investigation. Of the several dozen tips, two turned out to be very useful. Two witnesses had seen an old white van driving around Bertrix the day Laetitia disappeared. In one of these two cases a student was afraid the driver of the van was planning to steal his bike. As luck would have it, the 22-year-old had a passion for cars and reported to the police the exact type of van and a good chunk of its license plate, as the first three letters reminded him of the name of his sister. In no time Dutroux's name, a known pedophile, came out of the computer. A crisis meeting was held in Bertrix that evening and the following day Dutroux, his wife Michele Martin, and his sidekick Michel Lelievre were arrested. In the following days their testimonies led to the retrieval of two girls, Sabine and Laetitia, in Dutroux's basements. Belgium's case of the century was about to begin.

Failure to catch Dutroux
In the following months and years details came out about the failure of the police and BOB to catch Dutroux in an earlier stage. Although usually not presented in such a way, most of these rather odd failures can be ascribed to BOB officer Rene Michaux.

As head of Operation Othello, a surveillance operation against Dutroux from August 10, 1995 to January 1996, he practically knew everything there was to know about this already convicted, violent pedophile. From all sides evidence was presented to him that Dutroux not only had kidnapped Julie and Melissa, but also An and Eefje. However, Michaux ignored evidence presented by such informants as Claude Thirault, to whom Dutroux had mentioned how to kidnap young girls and how much you could get for them; Dutroux's mother, who had gathered evidence from her son's neighbors that he was likely involved in the kidnappings; and police officer Christian Dubois, who early on was on the trail of the gang of Nihoul, which would immediately have led to Dutroux.

In between all these reports, the video cameras aimed at Dutroux's Marcinelle home as part of Operation Othello failed to register Dutroux bringing in An and Eefje on August 22, nor would Michaux's team notice Eefje's failed escape attempt on August 25, in which she briefly climbed out the bathroom window to shout for help. An and Eefje were taken out of the house in September and murdered.

When finally forced to search Dutroux's Marcinelle home for reasons not related to the kidnappings, Michaux decided to ignore the voices of two young girls, seemingly not even trying to get a response from them. He also didn't think that Dutroux's odd L-shaped basement, with one wall much newer than all the others, was reason enough to tear it down, nor did he recognize the significance of such items as vaginal cream, a speculum, chains, and a videotape with the name of a program on it dealing with missing children. Two other videos which would have shown Dutroux working on his basement and him raping a 14 year old girl were returned to Dutroux's wife, apparently without having been reviewed by his team. This failure of properly searching Dutroux's home apparently led to the death of Julie and Melissa, who are believed to have died from starvation in Dutroux's basement. It also led to the kidnapping of Sabine and Laetitia after Dutroux got out of jail in March 1996. In August 1996, after Dutroux had been arrested on suspicions that he had kidnapped Laetitia, Michaux led another three hour search in Dutroux's Marcinelle home where at that moment Sabine and Laetitia were located. Needless to say, Michaux not only failed to find
the girls, which could possibly have led to the release of Dutroux, he also hadn't noticed the letters Sabine had hidden under Dutroux's carpet. Luckily, the location of the girls would be pointed out by Dutroux 48 hours later, after it had become clear to him there was no way out this time, especially not with his lackey Michel Lelievre spilling the beans.

These failures of Michaux led to strong criticism from the parents of An Marchal, who went to inspect Dutroux's basement themselves. The parents of Melissa Russo filed an official complaint against him. When Bourlet criticized Michaux in 2004 over his failure to even find Sabine's        
Rene Michaux, one of the world's most incompetent police officers.
letters, and seemingly implied this might not have been unintentional, Michaux could only react by calling Bourlet a "liar" and stating that "he sure wouldn't have found Laetitia under the carpet." These intellectual replies were soon followed by threats to sue for libel. Michaux's extreme incompetence was rewarded with a new position as a local police commissioner.

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Following is a brief recap of Dutroux's life and how extraordinarily incompetent the judiciary had to be to allow him to go on kidnapping girls.
Dutroux's had a long history of physically abusing women.
Convicted in November 1988 for kidnapping, photographing, torturing and raping five girls between the age of 11 and 19. Also convicted for torturing an older woman by putting a razor in her vagina. He tried to force her into giving him money.
In April 1992, PSC Minister of Justice Melchior Wathelet approved Dutroux's release from prison. Although it is normal in Belgium to be released after a third of the sentence has been served out, many in the system who worked with Dutroux did not agree with this decision. Dutroux was known to them as a manipulative psychopath without any regrets for his crimes. In fact, he never even admitted to them. Interestingly, Wathelet would be accused in the X-Dossiers of being a violent child abuser himself, together with some of his known proteges and associates (1).
After his release, Dutroux received an unusually large amount of sleeping pills and sedatives from his doctor, which he would later use to quiet the girls he abducted (2).
In his house in Marcinelle, near Charleroi, where he lived most of the time, Dutroux began constructing a concealed dungeon in the basement. In early 1993, the unemployed, small-time criminal Claude Thirault, who rented one of Dutroux's homes, was hired by Dutroux as a handyman to install water drains beneath one of his newly-bought houses. Although Thirault thought this was a bit unusual, he didn't mind doing it. But a few days into the job two girls walked past the house they were working on, prompting Dutroux to remark to Thirault: "If you want to kidnap them, you'll make 150,000 franks [about 4000 euro]... Grab them from behind, put a sedative drug under their nose, pull them into the car, and lock the doors." (3) Dutroux went on to explain how he had plans to abduct girls, lock them up in his basement and transport them abroad (4). Thirault, an occasional police informant, went to the police, and as a result Dutroux's houses were searched some months later, in December, the official reason being that he was suspected of a car theft. The police officers noticed Dutroux's modified basement, but did not find any girls. His house was searched again in June 1994 and it appeared to the officers that he had stopped working on the basement.
In June 1995, Dutroux was sued for having illegally widened an opening to his basement in an effort to put in a venting tube (5).
Thirault went back to the police after Julie and Melissa had disappeared to remind them of Dutroux's ideas about kidnapping girls and the modifications to his basement. The police got back to Thirault a few days later and asked him if he had some more solid evidence, apparently needed if the house of this known pedophile was to be searched (6).
On June 24, 1995, examining magistrate Martine Doutrewe became head of the 'Julie and Melissa cell', tasked with finding the missing girls. Unfortunately for the girls, Doutrewe left for vacation in Italy within days of being assigned to this post and would not return until early August 9 (38 years old at the time; suffered from cancer and had already planned to recover from an operation; died in 1999; in 1995, her husband was under investigating for having embezzled millions of euros). No other permanent investigating judge was appointed in her place which significantly impacted the efficiency of the entire investigation (7). Doutrewe would never seriously get involved with the BOB operation that was to monitor Dutroux's daily activities. The magistrate also never tried to arrange a phone tap, a search warrant or approval for a financial investigation (8).
On August 10, 1995, a group of BOB officers began monitoring Dutroux's movements under the code name Operation Othello. A time lapse video camera was used less than 2% of the total observation period (9) and operations were suspended at 10 o'clock each evening (10). The operation was so ineffective that on August 22, Dutroux was able to kidnap An and Eefje and lock them up in his house -completely unnoticed. On August 25, Eefje managed to grab her clothes, crawl out of the bathroom window and shout for help. Although she was pulled back in by Dutroux within seconds, the observers never noticed anything. A few weeks later the girls were taken out of the house -again unnoticed- and murdered. Dutroux was also able to kidnap three teenagers he suspected of having double-crossed him and lock them up in his house without any cameras or observers noticing anything. In addition, Dutroux had murdered Bernhard Weinstein during the period that he was under observation.
On September 4, 1995, Dutroux's mother, who advised against the 1992 release of her son, anonymously informed Rene Michaux, investigative head of Operation Othello, that the neighbors of Dutroux were very suspicious about his activities. Windows were blackened out, Dutroux was always making noise in the basement, the garden was filled with used car tires, and two girls "of 16 or 18 years old" had recently been seen in his garden. These girls had never been observed during daylight. This information somehow didn't make it to the investigating team that was working on the case of An and Eefje, who were 17 and 19 years old (11).
On December 6, 1995, Dutroux was arrested for having been involved in stealing a truck and kidnapping and torturing three teenagers he suspected of having restolen the vehicle (one of the teenagers had escaped and informed the police). Under the leadership of gendarme officer Rene Michaux, Dutroux's homes were searched on December 13 and again on December 19. One or more children were heard crying by Michaux and the locksmith (this person did not know anything about Dutroux being a suspect in the kidnapping of girls) accompanying him. They went to look in the basement, which clearly had a whole section which had recently been modified (12), but couldn't find anything, leading Michaux to conclude that the voices must have come from outside (13). The parents of Julie Lejeune, one of the children that was locked up there at the time, would later prove that normal communication was possible with someone locked up in one of the cells (14). Additionally, during the December 13 search of Dutroux's basement, Michaux found vaginal cream, chloroform, a speculum (medical instrument used to dilate bodily orifices) and chains, which to him were no cause for alarm. Videos were confiscated, which showed Dutroux working on his basement and raping a number of (unknown) girls. On one of the tapes the text "Perdu de Vue, Marc" was written, a reference to the tv program 'Lost From Sight' which dealt with missing children, and on which Julie and Melissa had also featured. Michaux and team never watched the tapes and gave them back to Dutroux's wife, Michele Martin (15).
In the afternoon of December 13, after the disastrous search in Dutroux's Marcinelle home, Michaux met with police officer Christian Dubois. Both had been working on a recent phenomenon involving occupants of white Mercedesses following and photographing schoolgirls. On this occasion, Dubois informed Michaux that he had an informant who had stated that the white Mercedesses belonged to a pedophile network centered around a company called Achats Services Commerces (ASCO; not to be confused with X1's abuse and snuff factory) located in the Brussels' suburbs. According to the informant, the occupants of the white Mercedesses were putting together catalogs of pictures of children. Their clients could pick one of these kids, which would then be kidnapped, locked up in Belgium for a while, and then exported to eastern Europe or Thailand. The price for each child would be about 7500 euros. During their conversation Michaux told Dubois about Dutroux. Dubois recalled: "I remember that Michaux told me that Dutroux went to countries in eastern Europe... The sums he mentioned for the kidnappings were similar to those given to me by my informant... Even today this still keeps me awake at night. I feel responsible. Afterwards, in 1996, I looked into Dutroux... You just felt it. This was the man we were looking for!" Michaux undertook no action and the Verwilghen Commission would later scratch its had why. ASCO turned out to be a highly interesting company. It was incorporated on July 2, 1991, primarily by Jean-Louis Delamotte, a friend and regular business partner of Michel Nihoul. Nihoul, Bernard Weinstein, Michel Lelievre and Michele Martin (not Dutroux) had all been spotted on a regular basis in the immediate surroundings of the company. People in the neighborhood had also noted that Nihoul was often surrounded by young negro girls and had the impression that these girls were on transit. Five mattresses and some baby milk were found inside the company's headquarters after it had gone bankrupt in 1994. Delamotte's company Soparauto, registered at the same address, owned 5 white mercedesses, all with French license plates, as had been reported (16). Delamotte would later also be pointed out as the thug who intimidated one of the X-witnesses (17) and possibly also the person who had looked after her.
On March 20, 1996, Dutroux was released unusually early on "humanitarian reasons"; his wife was about to have a baby. Operation Othello, the program that was monitoring Dutroux's movements, had been shut down in January, because Dutroux was in jail. The operation was not revived after his release.
In August 1996, Dutroux was finally caught by Michel Bourlet and Jean-Marc Connerotte. Sabine, one of two girls locked in the basement, had hidden letters under Dutroux's carpet. Michaux failed to find them, for which he would be criticized by Michel Bourlet in 2004 (18).
Even though more than 10 years have passed since Dutroux was arrested on suspicions of having kidnapped Laetitia, largely because of Michaux it is still somewhat of a mystery how many videos were confiscated in late 1995 and in August 1996 (19). Initial reports after Dutroux's arrest stated that the justice department was in the possession of more than 300 videos (20); within several weeks this number was upped to 5,000 videos. Reports that Dutroux's accomplices, including a number of high level officials, could be seen on these tapes also began to appear (21). In the end, this seems to have been a huge exaggeration (22), even though the exact amount of videos remains a bit of a mystery (23). Most estimates today are below 100, and only a portion of these videos appear to have shown Dutroux abusing young girls.

Nihoul
One of the most important reasons for speculation about a network has been Michel Nihoul. This person had been arrested on August 16 after the investigators of Bourlet and Connerotte found out that on August 10, one day after Lelievre and Dutroux had kidnapped Laetitia, Nihoul had supplied Lelievre, free of charge, with 1,000 XTC pills. The original investigators immediately suspected that these pills served as a payment for the kidnapping of Laetitia, suspicions which were only fueled when Nihoul was unable to provide an alibi for August 8 (24), the day when at least 8 witnesses claim to have seen Nihoul in Bertrix at and around the location where Laetitia would be kidnapped the next day. Additionally, some of these witnesses claimed to have seen Nihoul in the presence of Dutroux (or his van), who was carrying out an initial surveillance that day (25). Both Dutroux's wife Michele Martin and Michel Lelievre specified that Dutroux, at least in some cases, kidnapped girls according to specific wishes of clients. Martin stated that one of these clients was Michel Nihoul.

Michele Martin, Dutroux's wife: "I have heard Marc personally telling Lelievre that he should bring a girl for Michel Nihoul. If I haven't mentioned that before, that is because I'm afraid of that gang, I mean Nihoul, Marc Dutroux and others in Brussels. I mean well-placed individuals who Nihoul knew. The connections of Nihoul made me fear for my children and myself... I was afraid, because Jean-Michel Nihoul, Marc Dutroux and Michel Lelievre were part of a gang that was involved in all kinds of business, like drugs, pills, girls and forged papers [PEHI note: for which Nihoul would later indeed be convicted, just as human trafficking]. I have to say that at the time of the kidnapping of Sabine and Laetitia, Michel Nihoul, as I already stated, often called to Sars, to my home. He was looking for Marc Dutroux. He didn't call for me. When Nihoul tried to reach Marc he always remained vague. I never knew why he called so often to Marc Dutroux. Over time I became more and more convinced that Marc Dutroux and Jean-Michel Nihoul did things that couldn't stand the light of day and which I was not supposed to know about." (26)

"By the way, Marc told me that he went more and more to Brussels and met an increasing number of people in light of his activities with Michel Nihoul... Nihoul always gave me the impression that he had many connections that he could count on. Marc Dutroux told me that Nihoul had taken care of many of Lelievre's problems: he had prevented that he was arrested, he had worked out his fines and solved his money problems. Marc had accurately sensed that he would benefit from continuing to see Nihoul, because of his connections and those of his wife, the lawyer. The more they saw each other, the more they opened up of course. I think that at a certain moment a mutual trust was built. I see evidence of that in a conversation between Lelievre and Marc that I coincidentally heard and in which Dutroux said that they had to bring back a girl for Nihoul. I think that Jean-Michel had influence on Marc Dutroux. Marc often told me that he was impressed by the connections Nihoul had." (27) Michel Lelievre: "Marc always told me that he kidnapped girls for people who had placed an order with him. When he came out of prison in March 1996, I asked him who did the orders when he was in jail. He answered me that somebody else did that and that he certainly wasn't the only one. When we went to pick up a girl, Marc wanted that she corresponded with the order,

Michel Nihoul, Dutroux's apparent link to the upper echelons of the network. Found guilty by the jury, before it was overruled by the presiding judges (31). Nihoul is the ultimate example of an unscrupulous villain, but for some reason he has enjoyed the protection of many magistrates and media outlets.        small hips. He gave me a description of the girl that we were looking for. [One day] I asked him why they [An and Eefje] were still with him even though he claimed he had an order. He told me that the people who had placed the order had come, but that they weren't interested in them... Dutroux explained me that he conditioned the girls to be obedient and submissive when they arrived at customers..." (28)

"I would like to reveal other things about Jean-Michel Nihoul, but I don't want that these testimonies are taken up in the dossier. As I said, I fear for my life and those around me. I remind you that Nihoul told me the following: 'if you cross me, I will destroy you'. With those words he made it known to me that he would kill me or have me killed." (29)

Although convicted for financial fraud, drug- and human trafficking due to an overwhelming amount of evidence (30), Nihoul ultimately was acquitted from charges that he was involved in the kidnapping and murder of any of Dutroux's girls. However, to anyone who has taken an in depth look into
the case, it's clear that a whole lot of leads had to be ignored and discarded before this conclusion could be reached (32), raising two important questions: How, and why?


Victim-witnesses come forward
Probably the most important (and underreported) thing that happened in the aftermath of the Dutroux affair was that a number of victims from pedophile networks felt that this was their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to testify about what they had experienced. Until Connerotte and Bourlet were able to arrest Dutroux and Nihoul, and retrieve two missing girls, these victim-witnesses did not know who in the Justice Department they could trust. Many of these victims already had tried to speak to the authorities, but investigations never got off the ground. The victims knew the reason: among their abusers were the most powerful men in Belgium: police commissioners, gendarme officers, judges, bankers, businessmen, politicians and high nobility figures.

Not all, but most of these victims who came to Neufchateau to testify about "the network" were designated with an X, followed by a number. Although some of these women later on turned out to have known each other from the network, at the time they decided to testify to Neufchateau none of them had been in contact with each other for many years. Their interviews were conducted separately and they did not have access to each other's testimonies. A short introduction to each victim follows (33).

[Dig]

X1   Born in 1969. Abused and neglected by her parents. When 2 years old, sent to her grandmother in Knokke, who owned a hotel-villa that was used as a brothel for high-level pedophiles and sadists. Pedophile videos were also shot here. Introduced to her pimp, Tony Vandenbogaert, at age 4 who began to take her to other locations for sexual abuse and torture. Sent back to her parents in Gent in June 1979 for a variety of reasons. Extremely neglected by her parents for several months until her old pimp showed up again. For years she was taken to abuse- and torture parties. Managed to hook up with a boy she fell in love with, married, and immediately moved out in 1988, which appears to have saved her from ending up in a snuff movie. Never managed to break away completely from the network. Sometimes when her husband left the house for a few days to work as a truck driver, her pimp and some of his associates would show up and take her with them to locations where children were abused. On these occasions she was raped herself or had to participate in abuse against others. X1 was diagnosed with MPD/DID.
     
Nathalie C. (X7)   Born in 1969. Contacted by the BOB after testimonies from X1. First denied knowing anything about X1. It soon turned out that she was heavily traumatized and probably had MPD/DID. After having been brought in for an interview she began to speak about her father, how he sexually abused her, and how he liked to mutilate her sister with cigarettes. She then confirmed that she had been X1's best friend, that she knew about the sexual relationship with Tony and that she had been forbidden to go to the first floor of the hotel-villa of X1's grandmother. The interviews were cancelled by later investigators. X4 identified X7 as a girl who was forced to play in pedophile movies.
    
Chantal S.    Born in 1968. Another woman contacted by the BOB after testimonies from X1. Immediately knew what it was about. Sexually abused by her parents. Her grandmother was into Satanism. Moved with her parents to Knokke at age 6 and was sometimes brought to the hotel-villa of X1's grandmother. Here she also was sexually abused, although she didn't have to endure the extreme torture sessions that X1 regularly underwent. Confirmed that one of the abusers indeed was nicknamed "Monsieur". Had seen X1 being threatened with a revolver by her grandmother. Like X7, she was forbidden to go to the first floor. Chantal's testimonies resulted in a verbal fight between her husband and parents, in which her father admitted to have brought her to X1's grandmother. Tried to commit suicide and was taken up again in a mental institution. X4 identified Chantal also as a girl who was forced to play in pedophile movies.
    
X2   Police officer who worked on an aspect of the Dutroux investigation. When the X1 case was discussed during a meeting, participants noticed that she seemed very upset. After discussing her history of child abuse with one of her superior officers she decided to become a witness. X2 had ended up as a mistress to a magistrate in Brussels and later to a higher level officer and spokesperson of the Justice Department who was a member of the Rotary. These two men were part of a network in which she was abused from the mid- to late 1980s. X2 was spared from the extreme torture sessions, but heard other girls speak about child murders and was present at a hunting party on children, which is something other Xs have also spoken about. Some of the abusers and locations where this abuse was going on turned out to be the same as mentioned by X1 and other Xs. Withdrew as a witness when she saw that the investigation was being sabotaged, something which didn't surprise her.
    
X3   X3 had been in the network a long time ago, from 1950 to 1962. From age 3 to 12, she had been severely abused and tortured at home, together with her sister. After that age, her father and his influential group of friends brought her into the network. She described the same elements as other X-witnesses, although the scale of one of the meetings she described is hard to accept without any of the other witnesses backing up the practices at this specific location (some of those involved were in fact mentioned by others). Before contacting Neufchateau, X3 had already written anonymously about her experiences with child abuse and she was well respected for her work with other child abuse victims. It took five interviews before investigators wrote anything down, and even after writing summaries of her testimony it was attempted to leave out the royal family as much as possible - an unwritten rule in Belgium, because the king, in theory, can't be prosecuted.
    
X4   Born in 1965. Like X1, X4 had been persuaded by a friend to testify. As a young child she was loaned out by her mother to a pimp named Jacques V., who produced SM movies with children. Her story largely paralleled that of X1, although X4 experienced everything from within different sects. She recognized two childhood friends of X1 who had been abused, and named some of the same perpetrators as the other witnesses. X4's parents turned out to live next to a villa where X1 claimed a friend had been abused to such an extend that she died.
    
Nathalie W.    Born in 1965. With support from her therapist she gave her first testimony to the gendarmerie in February 1996, six months before the Dutroux affair. The officer who interviewed her refused to write down an official report. In July 1996, she found two other gendarme officers who were willing to work with her. Nathalie told how she had been raped by her father, a member of the Rotary, since the age of six. Soon thereafter brought into the network and was abused by her father's friends at parties in different villas in the region of Waterloo. When 10 years old, handed by her father to a prince and his main aide, who continued to take her to different abuse parties in Belgium. Confirmed X1's story about the Les Atrebates club, Nihoul and Tony. In turn, X1 recognized Nathalie as a girl from the network and accurately placed her at Les Atrebates. Even though Nathalie confirmed aspects of X1's story, she was easily discredited by her new interrogators, as she not only suffered from extreme psychological trauma (MPD/DID), but also from pathomimie, which is a tendency to inflict physical harm to one's own body in order to play the victim. This last psychological quirk seemed to have surfaced mainly after her original interviewers were replaced by two extremely abusive ones (like would happen with X1). She couldn't handle this pressure and quit testifying in March 1997. Nathalie was severely persecuted for having dared to step forward with her story, maybe even more than X1.
    
VM1   A gangster who came to Neufchateau in February 1997. Told how he had been brought up in a children's home in Mont-Saint-Guibert. From age 9 to 13, he was regularly picked up from this home by a local juvenile judge who brought him to abuse parties in villas around Brussels. Said that he later worked as a child prostitute in Le Mirano, an elitist club visited by some of the same men that featured in the testimonies of other victim-witnesses above, including Nihoul. Within two days of his supposedly secret testimony, VM1 was stopped on the streets and threatened with death.


Notice how these victims ended up in the network: instead of having been grabbed from the streets, they were brought in by their own families, or, in one case, taken from a children's home.

At least in western Europe, the idea of a lonely pedophile grabbing children from the street only seems applicable in a relatively small amount of cases (especially permanent abductions). There's a significant amount of evidence that a lot of child abuse happens within networks consisting of degenerate families and their acquaintances (34), which are exploited and protected (really for reasons not fully understood) by people higher up in the food chain (35). Children in the network often are forced to bring in other children (36). The new ones are then controlled through certain psychological routines involving threats, shame and guilt (37).

Although victim-witnesses often report having witnessed many murders in these networks, including children from western Europe, data about child disappearances and deaths is very uncategorized and therefore very inconsistent (38). As for the whole Belgium, estimates range from "at least" 43 disappearances between 1973 and 1996 (39) to as many as 1,022 in one year, with the D.A.'s office in Brussels claiming that approximately 280 children a year go missing in just Brussels alone (40). Also, if victims from these networks or some of the above numbers are correct, the obvious conclusion is that the media is not paying attention to many, if not the majority of child disappearances and deaths, which, in case of the British media, seems to be the true (41).

One interesting aspect many victim-witnesses from different countries have testified about is a very similar psychological approach used to allow the victims of even the most sadistic abuse to function (somewhat) in society, therefore not raising any really alarming questions in the immediate surroundings of the child. We are referring here to the encouraging and maintaining of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) in the victims (42). MPD has these days been renamed to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It basically is a psychological disorder in which the mind and the memory of the victim is shattered in ten, hundred, or possibly even a thousand different sub-personalities, making testifying extremely difficult and a very long term process. Several X-Dossier witnesses still heavily suffered from this disorder at the time they began to testify.

[Dig]

Questioning the alters
Although a one hundred percent confirmed psychological disorder, MPD/DID remains quite controversial in the public's eye (for those who even heard about it). It's true that DID is a complex disorder and sometimes hard to wrap the mind around (pardon the unintentional pun). But this is largely the result of a lack of information, and if any of the politically correct arguments are stripped away, the real underlying reasons for the controversy become quite simple.

First of all, DID is intrinsically linked to the most extreme sexual and psychological abuse against children. In 97 to 98 percent of the DID cases, victims talk about having been sexually abused since a young age (43). It's not uncommon for DID patients to give details about abuse that sounds so bizarre, horrifying and huge that, no matter what the evidence, will take some time and repeating for the average person to accept as even a possibility. Protected child abuse and -torture networks involving well known individuals would be a primary example of that.

The second reason is that these networks are protected by those involved, who apparently have the power to make sure that very little information on these networks appears in the public domain. Additionally, a rather small, but very influential group of "skeptics", organized around the US-based False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), have been doing a counter-attack since the early 1990s when reports of ritual abuse became a little bit too widespread (44). This group has done everything in its power to convince the public and the psychology community that all DID is created by incompetent psychologists. Because of an incorrect way of asking questions, these psychologists would have inserted certain "false memories" in their patient's minds. Even though more than a dozen board members of the FMSF have been accused of child abuse themselves, have come out in favor of pedophilia, or have a past in mind control research for a whole range of intelligence agencies (45), virtually no mainstream media ever felt the need to consistently point that out. As might be expected, Dutch and Belgian supporters of this FMS Foundation couldn't resist an attempt to discredit X1 with textbook disinformation tactics (46).

But even though FMS Foundation supporters have tried to muddy the waters somewhat, every textbook psychology book makes a clear distinction between DID and schizophrenia. The latter is characterized by delusions, hallucinations and a lack of sense of identity. The different alters of a person suffering from DID, however, all have an identity of their own, and although memory is never 100 percent accurate and there remains the possibility of manipulation, these alters have experienced something traumatic that actually did happen to this person. A brief article on the website of Merck, a large pharmaceutical company, gives one of the best summaries of what Dissociative Identity Disorder actually is:

"Dissociative identity disorder appears to be a rather common mental disorder [other sources say that DID is quite rare]. It can be found in 3 to 4% of people hospitalized for other mental health disorders and in a sizable minority of people in drug abuse treatment facilities. However, some authorities [the FMSF] believe that many cases of this disorder reflect the influence of therapists on suggestible people..."

"Dissociative identity disorder appears to be caused by the interaction of several factors. These include overwhelming stress; an ability to separate one's memories, perceptions, or identity from conscious awareness; abnormal psychologic development, and insufficient protection and nurture during childhood... About 97 to 98% of adults with dissociative identity disorder report having been abused during childhood..."

"... some symptoms may reflect the intrusions of past experiences into the present. For example, sadness may indicate coexisting depression, or it may be that one of the personalities is reliving emotions associated with past misfortunes... People with this disorder are prone to injuring themselves. They may engage in self-mutilation. Many attempt suicide."

"In dissociative identity disorder, some of a person's personalities are aware of important personal information, whereas other personalities are unaware. Some personalities appear to know and interact with one another in an elaborate inner world. For example, personality A may be aware of personality B and know what B does, as if observing B's behavior; personality B may or may not be aware of personality A..."

"Because the personalities often interact with each other, people with dissociative personality disorder report hearing inner conversations and the voices of other personalities commenting on their behavior or addressing them [not to be confused with hallucinations]. They experience distortion of time, with time lapses and amnesia..."

"People with dissociative identity disorder may not be able to recall things they have done or account for changes in their behavior. Often they refer to themselves as "we," "he," or "she." While most people cannot recall much about the first 3 to 5 years of life, people with dissociative identity disorder may have considerable amnesia for the period between the ages of 6 and 11 as well." (47)

X1 suffered from all the symptoms described above, and more. She told how many of her alters still had the same age as when they were created, or how her handwriting differed depending on which alter was active (48). As is obvious from her background of extreme abuse, these symptoms started at an early age. And interestingly, her pimp not only wasn't surprised when he first encountered X1's alters, he actually cultivated them.

"More than ever I discovered that I was missing time. I turned out to have gone to school, get good grades, I even turned out to know several classmates who spoke to me, but somehow this all had gone past me. It seemed as if someone else took over from me as soon as the door of my house closed behind me. It seemed as if the abused Ginie was put away until Tony again stood at my bed or at the school gate. The abused Ginie hardly was aware of school and family life, the other Ginie seemed not present during the abuse, and so lived 'normal'."

"It had always been this way. In Knokke, at grandmother's, the adults had noticed that I talked to the voices in my head, that I often rapidly changed moods, or even began to speak with another voice or accent. Even though I was only 5 or 6, I understood that something like this was weird and that it was not allowed. I learned to hide my voices, my other 'selves'. After what had happened to Clo, the voices, and the bizarre feeling that I at times was led by the inner voices (persons? -sic) got stronger. After the initiation I no longer resisted against the voices. It was blissful to disappear into nothingness, and only to become conscious again if Tony was there. The pain seemed more bearable."

"Tony was the only adult who understood that something was 'wrong' in my head. He didn't get mad about it, but cultivated it. He gave me different names: Pietemuis, Meisje, Hoer, Bo. The names slowly started to become part of me. The strange thing was that if he mentioned a name, the mood that fit that name was immediately called up. Pietemuis [Small Mouse] became the name of the little girl that he brought home after the abuse - a scared and nervous girl that he could comfort by talking to her in a caring and fatherly kind of way. Meisje [Girl] was the name of that part of me that only belonged to him. If he abused me in my bed in the early morning, for example, or if there was no one around us. Hoer [Whore], the name of that part of me that worked for him. Bo, the young woman who cared for him if he was drunk and needed to be looked after."

"'Now you just leave that to me,' he said when I asked him curiously why he gave me so many names, 'daddy Tony knows you better than you know yourself.' That was also true." (49)

Some of X1's other 100+ alters were Kenny, a young alter who had dealt with some of the worst torture; Stone, one of the toughest who answered to Tony and could control her fears; and Moon, born to deal with extreme cold (50).

Even after years of seeing a psychiatrist, X1 still suffered heavily from MPD/DID when she first contacted the Neufchateau investigating cell in September 1996. It took some time before her interviewers, Patriek De Baets and Philippe Hupez, began to understand how to work with her, but in the end, testifying turned out to be the most effective way to reintegrate X1's mind (51). This was a long and extremely challenging process though, and not only for X1. At times the long silences and panic attacks almost drove the interviewers crazy. An example of one of the interview sessions:

"... Meisje [Girl] sits on the window sill, saturated with pain and sadness. She feels the presence of the other victims so well that she can almost touch them with her thoughts. Shivering she crawls against the woodwork of the window and presses herself against it as if she wants to disappear in it... Patriek [De Baets] comes standing next to her, leaning against the window sill.
'Who are the girls you still remember, girl?' he asks, coincidentally pronouncing her name [of the active alter, "Girl"].
'Vero, Mieke, Clo, Noelle, Chrissie...' she says fluently, because she remembered every face, every child.
Patriek was perplexed. After such a difficult hearing, all of a sudden he heard his witness, in a young girl's voice, give a series of names that made him silent.
'Are they still alive?'
Meisje [Girl] lifted her shoulders.
'Some are, I think. Others are not.'...
'Who died?' he asked calmly.
'Chrissie,' I whispered.
Patriek asked how.
'They burned her.'
'Where?'
'In a basement,' she whispered even more quiet. And she withdrew deep within herself, fighting against the odor of the liquid that they had poured over her.
And then when he wanted to ask more, she shook her head.
'I want to go home,' she begged. Away from those horrible memories.
But Chrissie didn't leave her head anymore.
Her screams, her begs for help... Tiu [Regina's murdered child]. Everything came together that week, as if time was something malleable, and became alive again as soon as the images were recalled.
My son, who I had cherished; Chrissie who soon thereafter was gruesomely punished; the screaming in my head. The madness I had felt in the days after. The madness that had started when they... but I refused to let the images come through..."

"Pain? Indeed. It hurt so much that I could only tell via a detour who that day were with Chrissie. It almost drove Patriek and Philippe up the wall. Before them they saw a grown, frightened woman, while they had to communicate with Kenny, the heavily traumatized alter, who had become almost autistic after the death of Tiu and Chrissie. Kenny carried that information with him, but could not speak... stubborn, frightened, evasive, he pushed the questions of the BOB officers away. Only through the support of other alters, who listened along and were located close to him, it was possible for Kenny, stammering and rambling, to tell his story." (52)

[Dig]

A sniff of extreme abuse
DID was created in X1 because of her background of extreme abuse. But what did this abuse actually involve?

First there was the psychological aspect. X1 never received any support or love from her parents, her grandmother, Tony or any of her abusers. Especially Tony and the grandmother, who acted as her pimps, indoctrinated X1 with the belief that she was a nobody, that besides Tony nobody cared about a "little whore" like her, that she was too stupid to become anything else than a prostitute, and that "love" is something you never get for free.

Furthermore, X1 was blamed for just about anything that happened to her, to other children in the network, to her pets, or even to those who abused her. For example, if X1 had given fellatio to her pimp which wasn't satisfying enough, he would beat her up, yelling at her that she was worthless and that it was her fault he was so upset. If X1's abusers found out that she had given out signals of her abuse to the outside world, another girl would be tortured in front of her eyes. During the torture the perpetrators would scream at her that this was all her fault, and would put her face in the other girl's blood. X1 then had to ask forgiveness to the other girl. Even when X1's best fried was raped and murdered in front of her eyes -probably because this girl became too old- she was the one to blame. In most cases X1 was blamed for things she had absolutely no control over. The same thing happened to many other girls in the network. For the abusers it was a way to destroy the victim's self-esteem and confidence, making them perfect sex slaves and objects for sadistic torture (53). Besides the psychological indoctrination, X1 and the other victims reported to have undergone a whole range of other traumatic experiences. A session of violent anal sex at

Regina Louf (X1) described how she and others were sometimes raped by German shepherds or even how snakes were inserted into the vaginas of the girls. It sounds bizarre, but take a look at the pictures above. These have been confiscated from a child abuse network and appeared in the Dutroux dossier, DVD 3, 47073774-1 to 4.pdf. There are hundreds of children on these (low quality) pictures, making you wonder where all of them are today and how they are doing (or if they're alive in the first place). Judging from these pictures (and there are many more), sex with dogs and other animals is very common in child abuse networks.        age 3 certainly would fit in that category, as would being raped by a dog at age 4. But there also were the ice cold showers, the long and painful tie-downs, the many beatings, the rapes with knives and scissors and the torture with razor blades (54). One of X1's many experiences:

"Pčre forced me back on my knees, pushed me with my face on the cool table surface, and the other tied my left- and right wrist to the bed... I was unable to move in any direction and was forced to stay in this humiliating position... Everything is set ready, the lamps are pushed in the right position, the light intensity is measured - what is about to happen, I don't know, but the tension is building in my stomach. What's the deal with those dogs?... I feel how the claws of the rough-haired dog are pressing into my sides. I feel how he's panting in my neck, drool from his tongue is dripping on my back. I scream as I feel how he enters me, how his paws clasp me, his nails press into my skin. 'Get him off me', I scream... My cries are lost in an enthusiastic cheer when the dogs lets something wet run down my legs... It was the first photo shoot with dogs in a long line." (55)

Besides having been raped by dogs, X1 also
spoke about how Bernard Weinstein, an associate of Dutroux until murdered by him in 1995, and Annie Bouty, the former girlfriend of Nihoul, sometimes walked around with a snake at abuse sessions, which they used to rape the girls with (56). Sounds hard to believe, doesn't it? However, the pictures above were confiscated from a child abuse network and appeared in the Dutroux dossier (57). Among the hundreds of photos there are quite a few of children being raped by dogs. There also are two or three photos which show young girls with a snake in their vagina. Sex with other animals is not uncommon either. Following is another example which, according to Regina, happened to her in Knokke when she was 10 years old:

"When the contractions started her [X1's] grandmother made a phone call. The Lippens brothers, Vanden Boeynants and the assistant [police] commissioner of Knokke arrived. De
Bonvoisin and Vander Elst arrived thereafter... Vander Elst puts a knife on her throat while Bonvoisin rapes her... She must masturbate while Vander Elst makes a number of photos. Lippens rapes her with a razor blade. When the child exited, de Bonvoisin beat her [multiple times in the face]. Directly after X1 gave birth she was raped and sodomized. Her daughter disappeared six weeks later. She only saw her [daughter] at the factory again." (58)

What's there to say about this piece of testimony? The events sound bizarre, but the names and details have been repeated by other independent witnesses. Regina also frequently spoke about the "end circuit", in which many girls tended to end up by the time they reached their 16th birthday. Growing too old, not going along with the abuse, or failing to satisfy a customer; according to Regina, this could all lead to a child prostitute's untimely death.

X1, X2, X3, X4, Nathalie W., VM1, Jacques Thoma, Pascal Willems, and others all spoke about children being murdered. These murders were often captured on video, which were subsequently shown at a number of abuse parties. Besides the already powerful statements from witnesses there's also some independent evidence that these so-called snuff films, like child abuse networks, are more than just an "urban myth", as they are usually referred to.

Take the Dolo, the notorious night club that played a central role in the X-Dossier and the life of Michel Nihoul, who was one of its most prominent visitors. The Dolo was one of the locations in Belgium where important police commissioners, politicians, lawyers and directors of several well known companies interacted with gang leaders, alleged pedophiles and individuals involved in human trafficking (59). In 1997, Claude "Max" Vankeerberghen, the former valet of the Dolo and driver of Dolores Bara (the co-owner of the Dolo), testified that several Dolo visitors, including a person named Doudou       
More confiscated pictures from a child abuse network. These pictures are included here because images combined with text give a much more powerful message than words alone. Seeing pictures of the actual abuse really lets the reality and the depravity of these networks sink in (and we aren't even dealing with the worst abuse yet). The pictures are censored so it's harder to make silly claims that, for example, these few low quality photos are of any use to aspiring pedophiles. The mainstream Dutch Zembla documentary also included a few pictures of these abuse networks in their documentary, albeit uncensored (a very small child lying underneath a dog, for example). Not sure if that was such a good idea with all those moral crusaders out there. The DVDs, the relevant documents and any backups of these pictures have been deleted, shredded and thrown out way before this article was published. Of the many hundreds, all what's left are these pictures.
and Nihoul, were involved in a pedophilia ring which kidnapped children (60). The official report of Van Vankeerberghen also states:


"Van K. heard Nihoul and Doudou speak about cages for children, to make them suffer. Videos from the USA would show black children in cages in which they were tortured and burned [1992-1993 period]." (61)

The generally accepted origins of the snuff movie go back to the early 1970s, the name having been derived from Charles Manson, who is said to have coined the term snuff for murder, and his "family" (a cult), who committed a number of murders which some claimed were filmed.

Some years after these facts, beginning on October 2, 1975, there was a brief string of newspaper reports that the FBI and several police departments were investigating claims of reporters and informants that a number of 8 mm films, one of them from Argentina, had been smuggled into the country showing pornographic sessions ending in real murders (62). Details were provided for only one film, and they turned out to be very similar to the snuff scene added to the movie 'Snuff', brought out in early 1976 (63). Besides details of the scene, this movie had also been recorded in Argentina. As not a peep was heard anymore from detective Joseph Horman, who had spoken to the media in early October 1975, it is generally assumed the police and FBI were not on the trail of any real snuff movies.Even today the existence of snuff movies remains controversial because publicly-available visual evidence of these type of films is not available. Initially, the author of this article was quite intrigued by one of the pictures that appeared in the Dutroux dossier showing a girl impaled on a pole (between all the hundreds of confiscated abuse pictures). But after a bit of research this turned out to be a controversial scene from the 1981 movie 'Cannibal

An apparently real "snuff" movie. Found it via a regular file sharing network and turned out to be quite popular. All other available "snuff" was mainly regular porn, fake rape or indeed a few cases of real rape of under aged girls. This video is very macabre, is unedited and has awfully realistic feel and look to it, unlike the movies from the horror genre which are usually cited when the "snuff hype" is discussed (I watched them specifically for this article). Can I guarantee it's real? No. One would need to know who the victim is to start with. Who initially uploaded it? Good question. Don't know. At one point it was masked as a French-language Prison Break episode.       Holocaust', one of the movies often cited by skeptics who want to prove that the sole source for rumors about snuff films are bizarre horror movies like these. Other movies cited by skeptics are 'Flowers of Flesh and Blood', 'Nightmares in a Damaged Brain' and the earlier-mentioned 'Snuff'.

However, there's a big difference between these horror movies and the video of which screenshots can be seen on the left. In this low quality, unedited home video a person is torturing and raping a girl -allegedly his daughter- who has been tied to a chair. During the half hour that the torture lasts, the perpetrator pierces the victim's nipples, nails her right hand to the chair, pulls loose her fingernails, rapes her with a knife and does a number of other highly unpleasant things to this girl. Officially, it's not a snuff movie, because the victim isn't killed (at least, not
that day. Another session was announced for the next day) and it isn't known if this video was sold or distributed in a network, but one can wonder why this perpetrator, like pedophiles as Jean-Paul Raemaekers and Dutroux, was filming his own abuse. For personal use? Or for the same reasons that Raemaekers and others gave, to distribute it in a network? (64)

[Dig]

In stark contrast to the lacking visual evidence, victim-witnesses not only have been testifying about violent abuse and -trafficking networks for a long time, they also mentioned very specific and similar details, including the torturing and killing of children, sometimes in front of cameras. These reports really got off the ground in the United States in 1987, followed a few years later by Great Britain. Since the Dutroux case exploded, we also know that similar testimonies have come from Belgium and surrounding countries. As we shall see, Russia followed in 2000.

One of the more interesting cases pertaining to snuff movies is a child abuse and -trafficking ring of Brits who were forced to relocate to the Amsterdam region in the 1980s. Over the years, this ring made the news on several occasions.

The first time was in 1990, when a teenage victim-witness, Andrew, contacted welfare workers of the British National Association for Young People In Care (NAYPIC). Andrew claimed to have been a victim of a British pedophile ring and forced on several occasions to film snuff movies in a warehouse in or around Amsterdam. The welfare workers were skeptical, but until further developments the teenager was allowed to live in the home of NAYPIC's London development officer, Mary Moss. Just before Andrew was to give a more official testimony, he was drugged and pulled into a van, right in front of Moss' home. The teenager had already been threatened and followed in the streets before this kidnapping. It's not known if he was never heard of again. The report on Andrew also stated:

"Welfare staff at Naypic have been convinced by Andrew and other runaways that such [snuff] films are being made. They have been told of a paedophile group known as the Elite Twelve, which is prepared to pay up to Pounds 5,000 to youngsters to make videos involving torture and sado-masochism, and which may lead to murder."

"They have also been told of a snuff movie made last year when a 14-year-old boy was beaten by three men in an East End flat, raped and battered to death with clubs."

"Chris Fay, an adult adviser to the association, said: "I am convinced such videos exist. I have been shown one in Amsterdam by a Dutch colleague. It showed three men wearing leather masks cutting up a girl aged about 13 with a flick knife." (65)

In this article, one of the top experts in pedophilia, Ray Wire, is quoted as having seen snuff movies in the United States. On other occasions Wire explained that he watched them while on a fellowship in the United States with the FBI doing his behavioral study on child abusers (66). Apparently, he later stated that the films he had been shown were "sophisticated simulations", but was still sure that the FBI had real ones in their possession (67).

In April 1997, the British-Amsterdam ring again made the news. The first thing reported was that there had already been inconclusive joint UK-Dutch investigations in 1990 and 1993 (68). Also, by 1997, these police services were in the possession of at least three statements from child abusers that this ring had produced a number of snuff movies (69). Unfortunately, the only film specifically mentioned in the press had all the hallmarks of being fake, and indeed this later appears to have been the case (70).

The pedophile ring yet again made the news in June 1997 when it was announced that Warwick Spinks, a violent pedophile who ran a homosexual boys club in Amsterdam (who also claimed he could arrange snuff films), was to be released. Spinks had been convicted only two years before for drugging and sexually assaulting a homeless boy, kidnapping him to Amsterdam and selling him to a homosexual brothel. When his apartment was raided, police found his clients' names, details of their sexual preferences, phone numbers and information about young boys. (71)

The most detailed investigation of the British child abuse colony in Amsterdam was published in November 2000 by the Award-winning journalist Nick Davies. Now even more evidence was provided for the existence of not only a vast boy trafficking network, but also for the existence of a small number of snuff movies. As it's always best to read the original sources, a long excerpt from this article follows:

"A year after Bristol detectives finally started to unravel the ring of paedophiles who had been abusing children there for up to 20 years, they found an informant with an alarming story. The man, whom we will call Terry, had a long history of sexually abusing boys. He did not come from Bristol but, by chance, he had come across some of the paedophiles the detectives were investigating - in Amsterdam, where he said they had become involved with a group of exiled British child abusers who had succeeded in commercialising their sexual obsession. The exiled paedophiles were trafficking boys from other countries; running legitimate gay brothels and selling under-aged boys "under the counter"; they had branched out into the production of child pornography. And they had killed some of them... Terry said he had seen most of the [worst] video himself and had vomited before he could reach the end..."

"Soon, other informants were offering more detail. One man said he had seen Warwick Spinks selling a special video for pounds 4,000. It showed a boy whom he thought was only eight or nine being sexually abused and tortured by two men. But the most startling allegations came from a gay man, "Frank", who had gone to Amsterdam in July 1990 and found himself caught up in this paedophile underworld. In 1993, he spoke to the same officers at Scotland Yard."

"Frank told police that Warwick Spinks had invited him to come on a trip to the Canaries, where he had suggested Frank should help him sell videos and showed him a sample. Frank said he watched in growing horror as the video played out a murder - a boy who seemed to be no older than 12 was beaten and attacked with needles, before being castrated and cut open with a knife..."

"[Scotland Yard and their Dutch counterpart] recruited an undercover officer to pose as a child abuser and befriend Warwick Spinks in England. In a series of meetings, Spinks described how he picked up boys in Dresden, in Bratislava in the Czech Republic, and in Poland, where, he claimed, they cost only 10p. The undercover officer asked Spinks if he could get him a sado-masochistic video featuring boys as young as 10, and Spinks replied that he knew people in Amsterdam who could: "I know, well I knew, some people who were involved in making snuff movies and how they did it was, they only sold them in limited editions, made 10 copies or something, 10 very rich customers in America, who paid Dollars 5,000 each or something like that". Spinks divulged no more about the video and failed to produce a copy of it...Without more evidence, Scotland Yard could not justify the expense of keeping the undercover officer or of sending officers to Amsterdam..."

"In search of their origins, I went to Berlin, to the Bahnhof Am Zoo, where the trains arrive from all over eastern Europe, bringing the destitute in search of a dream. A specialist social worker there, Wolfgang Werner, told me there were some 700 east European boys, aged from 11 to 17, who had ended up in the sex industry in Berlin. But, to his knowledge, many hundreds of others had been taken off on a kind of underground railroad which fanned out to Zurich and Hamburg and Frankfurt, and, most of all, to Rotterdam and Amsterdam..."

"About that time [1992], he and Edelman [Germans] stopped trafficking, not so much because of Goetjes's arrest but because they had been told some of the boys were being used in snuff movies..."

"At first sight, Terry might have been describing the video Frank saw but its details differ: Frank described a video shot in a barn; Terry says his was shot in a flat. Frank described the abuse and murder of one boy; Terry says there was a second boy, who was also being abused and who was alive at the point he turned off the tape. And yet, the overlap is striking: the specific nature of the violence is identical; and Terry names the man who actually committed the killing - he is the same German whose barn was allegedly picked as a porn studio by the child porngraphers. Terry, Frank, Edward and Spinks certainly mixed with the paedophile colony in Amsterdam in 1989/90 and all four separately claim at least one boy was killed on video. Spinks told the undercover officer that a German boy was killed; Frank says Spinks once hinted to him that a German boy named Manny had been murdered; we have confirmed from talking to boys who worked in Spuistraat [there were two clubs, owned by vicious paedophiles Alan Williams and Spinks] at the time that a boy of that name and nationality, then 14, did disappear. Terry, however, says he thinks the victim of the video which he saw was Dutch, named Marco and probably 16..."

"The Bristol detectives can get no further. The Dutch say they will not investigate, and Avon and Somerset police have neither the funds nor the legal power to run their own inquiry in the Netherlands." (72)

Other evidence of snuff movies had surfaced several weeks before the article above was published. In September 2000, the Italian media broke the story of a Russian child abuse network -centered in Murmansk and Moscow- which besides regular child pornography and hardcore SM, also shot snuff movies, selling them for at least 4,000 pounds per video. The children were recruited through familiar tactics: they were lured away from the street or orphanages with empty promises, while a small number was kidnapped. Most clients, among them businessmen and government officials, came from Italy and Germany; others came from France, Britain, America and Japan. Several "large financial companies" were tied to the network, but names weren't given (73). The Observer reported:

"Last week Italian police seized 3,000 of Kuznetsov's videos on their way to clients in Italy, sparking an international hunt for paedophiles who have bought his products. The Italian investigators say the material includes footage of children dying during abuse..."

"The Russian videos, which had been ordered over the internet, were intercepted when they came into Italy by post, repackaged and then delivered by undercover police officers. They cost between Pounds 300 and Pounds 4,000, depending on what type of film was ordered."

"Covert film of young children naked or undressing was known as a 'SNIPE' video. The most appalling category was code-named 'Necros Pedo' in which children were raped and tortured until they died."

"The Naples newspaper Il Mattino published a transcript of an alleged email exchange between a prospective client and the Russian vendors. 'Promise me you're not ripping me off,' says the Italian. 'Relax, I can assure you this one really dies,' the Russian responds. 'The last time I paid and I didn't get what I wanted.' 'What do you want?' 'To see them die.'" (74)

[Dig]

A Swedish newspaper added:"The pictures are unbearable for normal people to watch. Here are prolonged rape sequences with children begging to be spared. They are abused until they faint. Then they are murdered in front of the cameras... Yes, there are even scenes of actual autopsies on young people... In the 'product catalog' of the pedophiles were pictures of a 10 year old girl who had been killed by

Andrei Minaev, one of the three main suspects of having ran the Russian ring. By the time the affair hit the news, his two partners had already been released from prison due to a recently-launched amnesty program for inmates. The picture is an excerpt of one of the confiscated videos.        hanging. A five year old girl with a grimace of pain as she is raped. An adult is killed by gradual crushing." (75)

Even though this news is hugely important, there have been only a handful of newspaper reports about this whole affair. In Italy, some of the most passionate reporters were quickly done away with after they had shown a number of abuse images in a late night television program (76). In contrast to the US media, which appears to have been completely silent on the subject (77), several British newspapers briefly wrote about the affair. But even in Italy the whole matter vanished from the public eye within one or two weeks with no follow up reports having been published since. So as usual, those who want answers are left with numerous questions: Have
the hundreds of suspects against whom evidence was found been prosecuted? What happened to the thousands of others who were still under investigation? Was this network tied to other networks? What happened to the videos? Can snuff movies still be considered a myth?


As for Belgium, besides witnesses in the Dutroux affair, there have been others who claimed that child abuse and snuff networks are a reality.

In July 1998, Marcel Vervloesem and his Morkhoven Workgroup (Werkgroep Morkhoven), a private anti-child pornography group, made international headlines after having obtained thousands of pictures from an internet-based, sadistic, child pornography network, ran from an apartment in Zandvoort (a town near Amsterdam) (78). They also acquired a list of clients and associates of this network, which turned out to include the earlier-mentioned Warwick Spinks (79). Because the children who appeared in these pictures came from all over the world, international police agencies were very interested and managed to identify several dozen victims. It was mainly the Dutch and Belgian authorities who failed to do their job, and when one reads that there are links to the British- Amsterdam paedophile ring (80), a person who probably procured children for high level officials (81), an anonymous "contact" of the Dutch royal family (82), and one of the girls named by X1 (83), things suddenly begin to make sense again.

Another overlooked fact is the Morkhoven Workgroup's claim that they were in the possession of a snuff film, which they showed to Hubert Brouns, a member of parliament and a mayor of a Belgian county; and Nelly Maes, a former member of Belgian parliament, European Parliament, a senator, and today chairman of the European Free Alliance party. Jan Boeykens, chairman of the Morkhoven Workgroup:

"Several years ago, I saw with Hubert Brouns and Nelly Maes a videotape at Marcel Vervloesem's on which it could be seen how a criminal dressed as a physician raped a constantly crying 4 year old girl in the 'doctor's cabinet' while a 12 year old girl, a so-called nurse, brought in the necessary instruments on a platter." (84)

Brouns and Maes, together with Marc Verwilghen, the chairman of the Dutroux commission, had reminded the Belgian Minister of Justice in November 1997 about some of the work the Morkhoven group had done, but their recommendations were disregarded. Researchers of the Morkhoven Workgroup have been relentlessly persecuted and intimidated ever since they first began their investigations in 1989. Vervloesem has been the main target of both the justice department and the media, but he still fared better than one of his colleagues. On November 15, 1998, one of the (part-time) Morkhoven Workgroup
investigators, Gina Pardaens-Bernaer, died when she drove into a bridge pillar. Few in her surroundings believed this to be an accident. Pardaens had spoken to a number of friends about a video of a sex party in which a little girl was abused and murdered. She thought to have recognized one the participants in that video as a close associate of Michel Nihoul. It was also said that she had gotten her hands on evidence of a Belgian-French-Swiss child abuse network, and had sent what she had to a very interested Swiss police. In the weeks and days before her death, Pardaens had been warned off her investigation on many occasions: she had received numerous death threats; her son had been run off his bike by a car; emails and phone calls had been intercepted; strangers followed her on the streets and in cars; during a train ride she had been stopped by men who told her to cease her inquiries; at times her phone calls, fax machine and internet were jammed; and she had been interrogated and intimidated over one of the children she had been trying to find. (85)

It has not been unusual for people who could testify against Nihoul's innocence, or provide evidence of a larger network around Dutroux in general, to be intimidated or killed. There have been at least 20 to 25 suspicious deaths tied to the Dutroux case (86), with just as many reports of intimidation. At some point the deaths became so obvious that Jean Denis Lejeune, the father of one of the girls kidnapped by Dutroux, remarked:

"As if by coincidence people die. There is no explanation for their deaths. For instance, they are victims of a        
October 2006, Marcel Vervloesem with Tiny Mast, the mother of murdered Kim and Ken Hehrman. Mast has also become a good friend of X1. Mast: "Those guys [inspectors she had to deal with] are so aggressive and so inhumane that I sometimes feel that they are part of the same clique as those who took away my children." Marcel, who came from a broken family, grew up in children's homes with 6 of his brothers and sisters. After he and his team had broken the Zandvoort case (and others) his half brother stepped into the limelight to accuse him of the exact same acts he was trying to prevent. Around his half brother a small group of other men came out to accuse Marcel (all came from his half brother's bar). This case has been going on for years, and while the media clearly supports the accusers, a judge recently demanded that the group around Marcel's half brother all be subjugated to lie detector tests, not the least because they (also) have been accused on multiple occasions of pedophilia and other criminal acts. Next to the abusers, the only ones benefitting from this debacle are the magistrates who had to follow up on the cases exposed by the Morkhoven group. That's not to say Marcel is a saint, but there's little doubt that he and his group are continually undermined by those who want to keep the existence of large scale child abuse networks secret.
deadly traffic accident just when they are under way to testify. Or one finds their charred bodies. Our judiciary apparently doesn't have sleepless nights over this." (87)


But besides members of the Morkhoven Workgroup there was another researcher who already in the early 1990s gave detailed information about Belgian child abuse networks and the reality of snuff movies. His name is Belgian Jean-Pierre Van Rossem, and apparently, just before bailing out, he had even arranged to play in one.

No doubt, van Rossem is one of the most eccentric and controversial persons of Belgium. However, even though he looks like a doped-up cult leader, he certainly isn't. In the 1970s, Van Rossem developed a piece of software called Moneytron which apparently could quite accurately predict trends in the money market. With an average return on investments of 18 to 25% in the 1980s and early 1990s, van Rossem gained a fortune of several hundred million dollars and attracted businessman from all over the world. At some point, he also counted the Belgian royal family among his clients. In 1991, van Rossem was sentenced to 5 years in jail on charges of massive financial fraud (released after about a third of the sentence, which is normal in Belgium). It would probably have been a lot longer if his clients would have testified against him. However, a lot the money van Rossem was handed appears to have been dirty.

Just before being convicted, van Rossem had become active in Libertarian politics and had won three seats in parliament. Around the time he went to jail he had begun to write books. One of these books was 'Hoe kom ik van de ground?' ['How do I get off the ground?'], published in 1993, in which he described his experiences with escort-services, brothels, SM clubs and other aspects of sex culture.

Even though he was enormously wealthy and knew everything about finance, van Rossem was mostly shunned by the Belgian aristocracy. Besides his unusual look and simple background, his anarchist tendencies appear to have been the main cause of that. Van Rossem has made numerous peppered statements, not only against the Belgian royal family and Islam, but more recently also about the West's financial clique keeping the third world poor, 9/11 and bird flu (88).

For his book 'Hoe kom ik van de ground?' van Rossem gathered a small group of people who went to all kinds of different sex clubs to give them a rating. Although this is already quite an unusual thing to do, especially for a reasonably prominent person, that wasn't even close to enough for van Rossem. Van Rossem also tried to unearth evidence of child abuse and snuff networks and it appears that he succeeded in that. His narrative of the whole adventure reads like a somewhat more hardcore version of the 1999 movie 8 mm with Nicolas Cage. At some point, Van Rossem took with him a well known customer of many different sex shops in Belgium and just across the border in the Netherlands. In all these shops he asked the owner for "more exclusive" material, obviously implying illegal, under the counter magazines, pictures and videos. None of the sex shops in Antwerp and Brussels could or would help him with this request. However, in a few stores in Hulst and Putte (two small towns about 60 km or 40 miles apart, the former just across the border in the Netherlands, and the latter in Belgium.
Antwerp is right in between them) he was able to get pedophile magazines, pictures and videos. One of the things that Van Rossem learned was that paedophiles were active at the Dutch- Belgian border who kidnapped children, often for brief periods, to abuse them in front of the camera. Apparently, the Dutch and Belgian police in these areas have numerous dossiers on this kind of abuse, but in the rare cases that a perpetrator is caught, they are usually unable to prove that the abuser is in contact with a network. As numbers on missing and killed children are too unorganized to be very useful, this might very well be true. (89)

After buying some of the pedophile goods, which included a painful rape of a small child, van Rossem went back to one of the sex shops and asked for even more hardcore material for which he was willing to pay a hefty price. He hinted that he would like to see a girl being murdered on camera. Within a week, van Rossem received what he had ordered for 5,000 euros, a price quite similar to later reports.

"The tape showed how the girl was brought into an empty room by a man with a hood over his head. She was handcuffed... The man cut the clothes from her body with a knife. She had scratches and bruises all over her body. He hit her in the face with his hand. After that she was thrown to the ground by the same man and anally raped. When he was done with this, he threw the girl against a wall and began to beat and kick her over her whole body. When she slid to the ground, he went to stand with one foot on all her limbs and broke with both hands her arms and legs. Then for some time he slowly worked on her with a knife, and stabbed her 32 times in total, mainly in the chest and abdomen. Finally, he cut her throat, again slowly. After that, he slowly labored on the girls' body, from the feet to her head, with great attention to the bloody details. It was perfectly clear that the girl was already dead by then. The whole movie had lasted 57 minutes and had not been edited." (90)

Having been supplied with this video still was not enough for van Rossem. While receiving the video from the sex store owner, he had inquired if he could be present when such a snuff movie was shot. The sex store owner had called to his anonymous supplier with this request and informed van Rossem that something might be arranged. But first he had to give his personal information. Two days after having watched the video, van Rossem was called by a representative of the organization that made these snuff movies, and was invited to a cafe in Breda (Netherlands) that same evening. When van Rossem arrived, a well-dressed man of about 30 years old approached him. This person informed van Rossem that he was to take him to a person "who could help him". Van Rossem was brought to another cafe where a slightly younger, but equally well-dressed man was waiting. This person informed him that they had looked at his personal and financial information and that this was satisfying. In        
Van Rossem: part time computer expert, financial expert, politician and white collar criminal, but full time anarchist. He referred to "snuff" as "sniff", a term not often used. According to van Rossem, this term has been derived from "sniffing up the real atmosphere of illegal sex" (p. 125 of his book). Apparently, Texan millionaires, Japanese businessmen on a stopover in the United States and Arab sheikhs have become the most important customers of pedophile snuff movies (p. 125-126), which solely refers to movies in which a person is murdered for the exact purpose of filming the event for distribution. One thing we know for sure is that some of the (often Western intelligence-connected) overly religious Middle-Eastern princes and sheikhs have rather interesting sexual preferences. April 23, 2003, The Scotsman, 'Britons held over 'Royal sex ring'': "According to the popular weekly news magazine VSD, the Saudi prince, who has not been named, paid 1.9 million for three months of attention. Some 40 members of the call girl ring from Poland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the United States, Venezuela and Brazil allegedly travelled to Dubai at the end of January and were installed in a royal palace. The group included several models as well as male prostitutes and transvestites. Members of the ring were paid 27,600 each, the magazine said, as well as receiving presents including watches and jewellery from the Saudi royal... The prostitutes said they were under constant surveillance and were forbidden from making telephone calls."
This is by no means the only accusation. The Fortunato Israel prostitution ring also had Arab diplomats and businessmen among its clients, just as men from the notorious Adnan Khashoggi. Although covered up by an alleged child abuser, this ring was also tied to child abuse and murder through Maud Sarr and especially Israel's mistress, Roger Boas (in whose factory allegedly a snuff room was located). Kay Griggs, wife of Col George Griggs, also mentioned some of the Saudi princes in relation to child abuse, sexual perversion and blackmail. X2's testimony raised the question if van Rossem's research hasn't been too in depth for his own good.
two or three short conversations over the next two days a deal was made in which van Rossem would be taken to an undisclosed location where he could rape and kill a girl any way he liked. It would cost him 75,000 euros; 45,000 if he only wanted to watch.


Of course, van Rossem backed off at the last moment, leaving the organizers of the event with the impression that he was afraid to get robbed by them. Van Rossem went to one of his other apartments at the sea for the few months to lay low, but before doing that, he had deposited all his evidence and additional information in the mailbox of the Court of Cassation in Breda. Van Rossem waited and waited in the following weeks, expecting to be contacted or at least reading something in the paper about a follow up investigation. Nothing happened and nothing was reported.

The sex shop remained in existence and after some time van Rossem sent one of his contacts to inquire yet again for "special material". It turned out that there was a new owner who couldn't arrange any of this. After the contact explained that it had been possible in the past to get this "special material" at this location, the new owner explained that this is what had gotten the previous owner into trouble. So apparently something happened, but it never made the newspapers.

It is clear that van Rossem did as in depth research on the topic as possible, as he himself continually visited the red light districts of every major city he went to. He loved visiting prostitutes. Not withstanding that he did an excellent job with his book, in late 1996, X2 raised some question about how in depth van Rossem's research exactly has been. PV 117.535, November 19, 1996, summary of X2 testimony:

[Dig]

"Parties with under aged children in Eindhoven [large Dutch city near the Belgian border] with Delvoie. 18th century Castle. Departure in convoy from Knokke. The cars with German license plates followed with the little girls. Reception at the castle = a woman = price of 2,000 Belgian franks per person [about 50 euros]. It is necessary to come with another person. It is necessary to take off clothes. A bikini might be accepted. Swimming pool - sauna - solar bench - cold buffet. [There are] rooms without doors to [different] themes. Room with mirrors and cameras. Room with several mattresses. Room with obstetric tables - handcuffs - chains. Karel and X2 [went] 30-50 times to this castle [seemingly an average of about once a month]. Same little girls as those in Cromwell. Clients of the castle: Patrick Denis... Jean-Pierre van Rossem... Baron de Bonvoisin... Jean-Paul Dumont... friend of Patrick Denis = Carine... Another Carine and Patricia who work in the Palace of Justice in Bruxelles... Benoit Hubert... Claude Leroy... [Paul] Bourlee (attorney in Nivelles)... The little girls disappeared when they were about 15-16 years. For the orgies [were used]: little girls of 12-13 years. In the summer of '88, one of the oldest [Eva] (15-16 years) was taken into the sadomasochist room - she was never seen again. The little girls drank alcohol and came out of these parties [completely] numb."

At least in the summary, it is not specified who of the guests did and didn't abuse the under aged girls. It's possible that this was just one of van Rossem's many paid-sex explorations and it is obvious that a one time visit would be enough for anyone to remember him. But still, this testimony does raise some questions.

However, many events in van Rossem's life, which is characterized by bizarre situations and controversial statements, raise questions. In some cases, his statements reflect a huge egotism, but he often appears to be giving the simple truth, something which is not appreciated by everyone. An example relating to the global trafficking of children and women (many other quotes have been taken up in his biography in 'the accused' appendix):

"The Philippines are the target of boy-loving pedophiles, who can get here anything they want. Nine or ten year old boys are loudly offered by hotel managers or by pimps on the streets. Rio has also become a pedophile paradise where boys and girls are offered freely. In Bangkok the lovers of hard sex and extreme SM or similar rushes can find what they are looking for... In clubs there is a floor show in which sex with dogs, snakes, goats or even donkeys, ponies and horses is very normal, and where girls are delivered to hotel rooms on an "everything is allowed" basis... Violent sex, in which the girls or boys are hurt, mutilated or killed, is very normal here. The eastern European countries formerly belonging to the USSR: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria have become sex paradises in a very short period... In a timeframe of several years Budapest has become an immense red light area, with hundreds of bars, cabarets and brothels, and has it become the largest rotating platter of trade in woman in Europe. In the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg thousands of heroin and vodka addicted girls offer their services... Also with us the bars, cabarets and brothels are filled with eastern European girls." (91)

Even though the public still thinks that sadistic child abuse is mainly a crime committed by a few unorganized psychopaths as Dutroux or Fourniret, in professional investigating circles it is widely acknowledged that large, organized, sadistic child abuse networks exist right here in the West. Going through British newspaper archives provides one with numerous reports of pedophiles trading pictures and videos amongst one other, sometimes on a very large scale. Senior executives of Scotland Yard, Europol or Interpol (Bjorn Eriksson) have accepted the existence of large paedophile networks a long time ago (92).

Girls X1 had witnessed being murdered
X1 claimed to have witnessed the torture and murder of dozens of children, mainly in the period 1976-1988. She gave the first names of about 35 of these children and claimed to have forgotten the names of another 30 or so (93). Inspectors picked out some of the more interesting names and descriptions given by X1 in an effort to establish her credibility. As a result the investigations into four deceased girls were reopened: Veronique Dubrulle, Christine Van Hees, Carine Dellaert and Katrien de Cuyper. Even though X1's information about these girls turned out to be amazingly accurate, or, in other cases, led to whole lists of interesting coincidences, every single investigation was ultimately shut down.

The life and death of these girls has been described in great detail in the 1999 book the X-Dossiers and the 2004 Zembla documentary. Only occasionally a footnote will be used. As far as possible, every claim has been checked via the PVs.

Veronique Dubrulle, from Gent:
After correctly pointing out a picture of Veronique Dubrulle, X1 accurately stated that this girl had died in or around 1983. According to X1, Veronique had been tortured to death with a knife at an abuse party where Michel Nihoul, Annie Bouty, her pimp Tony, Emile Dellaert (father of another murdered girl in the network), a member of the Bert family and several others had been present (94). Veronique's father, Jacques, turned out to be an administrator of the cinema company Decatron NV, which was owned by the Bert family, and went on to become the long time chairman and patron of the International Film Festival of Flanders, located in Gent.

Patriek De Baets and his team looked up the death certificate of Veronique and it turned out that she had officially died from a chronic disease, apparently cancer. In any case, because of the nature of the disease, the inspectors couldn't figure out why a neuropathist and a neurosurgeon had signed her death certificate. They went back to X1 and asked if she knew any of these men. According to X1, these two doctors -one of them internationally esteemed at this moment- had been present at abuse parties organized by the Hanet family of UCO Textiles, also headquartered in Gent. She had been raped by one of them, the other was more interested in 7 to 8 year old girls (95).

The investigation into the death of Veronique was shut down in early 1997. One of the main arguments was that De Baets and his team should have waited with questioning X1 about the two doctors after she had been able to identify them from pictures (couldn't this be done afterwards, some would ask). The investigators were never given permission to exhume the body of Veronique.

Interestingly, around the time the investigation into Veronique's death was closed, the existence of the X-Dossiers was mentioned in the press for the first time. Inspectors who had been put on the Dubrulle case found out that Tony, X1's former pimp, phoned up Jacques Dubrulle three times right after these publications. Later research by the authors of the 1999 book 'The X-Dossiers' indicated that both men were good friends. The parents of Veronique, who were quite prominent at the time, have never tried to defend themselves against the accusations made by X1, which were reported in the press.

According to X1, the two Gent doctors were not part of her pimp's immediate circle and they were not involved in the child hunts.

Carine Dellaert, from Gent:
X1 had spoken about a girl named "Clo" since her first interview on September 20, 1996. According to X1, Clo had been 3 years older than herself and was murdered somewhere "between June and December 1983" (96). According to X1, at one point in 1983 she had been picked up from school by Tony and taken to a house in the region of Gent. She found her friend Clo there, lying on a bed. Clo was trying to deliver a baby, but in the process was continually raped and tortured. As a result, she had lost a lot of blood and ultimately died. The baby was taken away.

One of the few things X1 was able to remember about the life of Clo, was the street where her school was located. Armed with this information, the investigators were able to present X1 with 1981-1982 class photos on which she recognized Carine Dellaert as being her Clo. X1 also pointed to a certain "V.", about which she stated: "they killed her too". The investigators checked X1's information and it turned out that Carine Dellaert had disappeared on August 30, 1982, only to be found very badly decomposed in an abandoned cesspit on September 24, 1985. She indeed was 3 years older than X1. The other girl X1 identified by name also had died in 1983 (97).

During the investigation into the death of Carine Dellaert, X1 recalled that her Carine "Clo" Dellaert had worn "an ankle bracelet... a chainlet". And indeed, the 1985 autopsy report on Carine Dellaert mentioned that this girl had worn an ankle chainlet. That same report also mentioned that the remains of a laminaria tent were found at the height of Carine's pelvis. The only purpose of laminaria tents is to slowly open up the cervix to make it easier and more comfortable to give childbirth, again supporting X1's testimony that Carine was trying to deliver a baby in her final hours (98). Additionally, soon after her daughter's disappearance Carine's mother had found out that her daughter was in the possession of maternity clothing (99).In early 1997, the BOB in Gent, headed by prosecutor of the king Jean Soenen, took over the investigation of the X1-Dellaert link. They ceased all cooperation with Neufchateau and
began a campaign of manipulation and intimation, which ultimately led to the following

Carine "Clo" Dellaert, introduced to the network by her father, according to X1 and Carine's closest school friend. 1999, 'The X-Dossiers', p. 170: "A former neighbor testified that he had often heard Carine Dellaert shouting for help when she was alone at home with her father."       conclusion by Soenen (read out in very bad Dutch on national tv):

"... the testimonies of Regina Louf, alias X1, have been closed definitively. As an overall conclusion it can be stated that all her testimonies have been totally unbelievable and the [inaudible] of pure fantasy. Her testimonies pertaining to the death of Carine Dellaert are completely wrong. During the investigation it clearly turned out that the girl Clo, if this person even existed, absolutely does not identify herself with Carine Dellaert." (100)

As usual, there's a total lack of respect for the victim and numerous statements had to be ignored and taken out of context before this conclusion could be reached. Besides some of the things that have already been mentioned, one example is the fact that the BOB in Gent claimed that X1's description of the villa in which the murder allegedly took place was inaccurate. The team of De Baets concluded otherwise, the authors of the the book 'The X-Dossiers' concluded otherwise, and finally a court of law also concluded otherwise (101). Unfortunately, the case was already dead and buried by that time.

Another important detail about the house designated by X1 that was
never investigated by the Gent BOB was that it used to be a brothel, the International Club, where many upper class people came. Coincidentally, the parents of X4 lived next door (102). A person named Gustaaf Derdijn had rented the villa since 1991 from the same people who owned the house in the early 1980s. During this time in the early 1980s, Derdijn had been the owner of the Co-Cli-Co, a night club where X1 claimed to have abused by customers of her pimp, Tony, together with Clo/Carine. Investigators found that the Co-Cli-Co was mentioned in Tony's diary. They also found out that when this night club went bankrupt in 1984, one of its largest creditors was Le Cinema Publicitaire, a videostore owned by Tony. The largest creditor was the firm All-Meat, in which not only Derdijn was a partner, but also the Dutch porn king Gerard Cok (103). Cok had been in a partnership with "Fat" Charles Geerts since 1981-1982. Geerts is one of the largest porn kings in the world and even more so than Cok, is intimately tied to the Dutch (and international) mafia. Interestingly, Geerts has been accused on several occasions of trade in pedophile movies (104).


Other examples of evidence ignored by the Gent BOB are the testimonies of Kristelle M. and Fanny V. (a pseudonym). Fanny was Carine's best friend at school. She remembered how Carine would often speak to her about sexual abuse by her father and his friends, and how Carine had often thought about running away from home (105). Kristelle M. was a classmate of X1 who was among those who confirmed X1's relationship with Tony, a person who often waited for her after school. X1 apparently told Kristelle at some point that she was pregnant from this man. Also, according to Kristelle, X1 often went out with a girl named "Christine, Carine, Caroline or Claudine" (106). In 1998, in the aftermath of the X1-Dellaert affair, some old classmates of X1 apparently confirmed that Carine had indeed been known as "Clo" by some (107). This would be a direct contradiction to the claims made by the BOB in Gent.

One of the main reasons cited by prosecutor Jean Soenen for his decision to close the case of X1-Dellaert was that she refused to cooperate when confronted with Carine's father, Emile. Unfortunately, Soenen and the press generally forgot to mention the circumstances of this confrontation. First of all, X1 had been confronted with Tony the day before, and even though he confirmed vast portions of her story, she had been completely drained by yet another intimidating confrontation in which all kinds of manipulations took place. Secondly, like Fanny V., X1 had already testified from day one that Carine's father had been the one responsible for bringing her into the sadist abuse network. It apparently also didn't bother the Gent investigators that Emile had already been investigated for accusations of incest in 1977, next to suspicions against him that he had an affair with an under aged girl in the Netherlands in 1965. Because of accusations of incest from his wife and because he waited a week before reporting his daughter missing, Emile became a suspect in the disappearance of his own daughter. During the investigation the police found out that Emile shot "sensual" photos of his daughter, that witnesses at Carine's scouting club thought that father and daughter were acting more like a couple in love, that Carine had become extremely afraid of the woods all of a sudden, and that she was often heard screaming in the weeks before her disappearance (108). It all didn't matter. Emile would be released, acquitted and later supported by most newspapers after the X1-Dellaert case had broken out.

[Dig]

Christine Van Hees, from the Brussels region:
The 16 year old Christine Van Hees was found tortured to death on February 13, 1984, after an emergency fire response to an old champignon factory. The murder had been surrounded by mystery from day one, and those that largely contributed to that (directly or indirectly) included Jean-Claude Van Espen (business associate and family of Nihoul; would play a crucial role in the X-witness investigation, supporting the fraudulent re-read conclusions), Guy Collignon (chief investigator of the Van Hees murder; apparently acknowledged a cover-up to Christine's brother), Baudouin Dernicourt (later one of the main X-witness re-readers), Didier de Quevy (lawyer of Alexis Alewaeters and soon Marc Dutroux) and Jean-Paul Dumont (CEPIC lawyer; accused by different sources of being part of the Nihoul abuse network). A group of punks was implicated, but no evidence could be found, only false leads.Over a decade later, on October 25, 1996, X1 mentioned a number of girls that she had witnessed being murdered. Among these names was a "Christine". Because of the details
X1 provided, De Baets and Hupez began to think about "le crime de la champignonniere".

According to X1, Christine had met with Nihoul in October 1983 and somehow began a relationship with him. After a while, Christine began to figure out that Nihoul was a pretty bad guy, but was afraid to speak about him to her parents. She feared that Nihoul and his friends might hurt her, or possibly her parents. Also, Nihoul had persuaded Christine        
Christine Van Hees.
to have sex with X1 and participate in orgies. She was afraid that her parents wouldn't understand.


Against all protocols of the network, X1 encouraged Christine to try and speak with her parents. X1 briefly mentioned her advice to Christine to Mieke -another girl from the network- who unfortunately became so afraid of reprisals that she informed Nihoul and Tony about X1's dissent. As a result of that, X1 and Christine were taken to the abandoned champignon factory where Christine was murdered.

Whole documentaries can be made about just the X1-Christine Van Hees aspect of the X-Dossiers. To keep things relatively short, below is a quick summary of facts which indicate that X1 spoke the truth about Christine Van Hees and her murder. These facts have mainly been discussed in De Morgen newspaper, the 1999 book 'The X-Dossiers' and the 2003 Zembla X-Dossiers documentaries.
X1 had stated that Dutroux, who she described as a bit of an outsider, was present at the murder of Christine. Research showed that in the early 1980s Marc Dutroux and Bernard Weinstein visited the same skating rink as Christine Van Hees. According to Michele Martin, Dutroux went there alone since 1983 to make it easier for him to "seduce girls". Just before her death, it is known that Christine had a date with a "Marc" who could well have been Marc Dutroux. However, no conclusive research has been carried out. Additionally, Nathalie Geirnaert, a friend of Christine who lived in the same street as her, recognized Marc Dutroux on two old pictures from the early 1980s as someone who she had seen in the company of Christine. Nathalie explained that in the days before her kidnapping, Christine had become extremely scared of someone or something. When she would leave Nathalie's house, Christine would ask Nathalie to accompany her to her house or ask her to stay at the door until she was inside. The night before the murder Nathalie noticed a suspicious black car in front of Christine's house from 23:30 to 13:00. A man had been sitting behind the wheel the whole time. Nothing was done with Nathalie's testimony.
According to X1, Christine had met Nihoul in October 1983 and had begun a relationship with him. Friends of Christine later testified that she had begun to act different for the first time in October 1983. Also, Christine often went to the swimming bath of Etterbeek. One floor above this swimming bath the radio show of Michel Nihoul was located. Nihoul had already been very active in Etterbeek through the Dolo. Coincidentally, during the investigation into Christine's murder an anonymous tip came in that the Dolo in Etterbeek was the key to solving the Christine Van Hees murder. No investigation was carried out. In fact, somehow the investigators, headed by Van Espen, managed to write down that the tip was about cafe Chez Dolores instead of the Dolo.
In late 1984, Fabienne Kirby, a friend of Christine Van Hees in her final months, gave a testimony that would not be incompatible with the one of X1 12 years later. According to Fabienne, Christine had told her how she had ended up in a dangerous group of people involved in sex orgies and apparently sadism. PV 7112, February 20, 1984, Fabienne Kirby (anonymous at the time) to the judicial police: "We got to know each other in October 1983. Over time our discussions became more and more intimate. Christine told such unbelievable stories that I slowly became convinced that she made things up. She told me that she had gotten to know a group of people. She regularly saw them at an abandoned house close to her house. She regularly saw these people in the months October and November 1983. These people were older than Christine. She explained to me that meetings were held in that house, to which a road led about nobody knew. Other girls were in the group. Sometimes, she said, she went alone to the house to write her diary. Christine never spoke about this with girls from her school class. I was bewildered when she told me what happened there. She told me that if she ever spoke about this with her parents or brothers, her so-called friends would kill her and burn down the house. She told that in the group free love is practiced... She told me that this group attracted and frightened her at the same time. In early 1984, I noticed that Christine had changed a lot. She had lost weight, was paler and in any case took less care of herself. She said she wanted to blow up all bridges because very bad things had happened. I noticed that she had bruises, and a cigarette burn on her arm. She then explained that it had started as a game, that those games had started slowly, but then became violent. Christine had come into conflict with one of the other girls in the other group. She felt very much attracted to a member of the gang. She told me that it was possible to feel sexually attracted to a man, without really loving him. She truanted from school. About her friends she said: 'They are pigs, but I feel good with them.' She said me that, once you ended up in that milieu, you never got out. It was of little use, she said, to talk about it with someone, because no one would believe her.'" Kirby explained that she had undergone an abortion during the time that she knew Christine. The father would have been a member of the Derochette family and a full cousin of the now well known pedophile Patrick Derochette. A law clerk of examining magistrate Jean-Claude Van Espen, who headed the investigation into Christine Van Hees, married into the Derochette family and was tied to the kidnapping and murder of Loubna Benaissa. It is known that a woman named Nathalie Perignon phoned up Fabienne during the Dutroux and X-witness investigation. Coincidentally, Perignon had been present with three men in a black car observing the champignon factory where Christine had been murdered the week before. All four individuals in the car worked at Nihoul's Radio Activite and personally knew Nihoul.
X1 was blindfolded and bare-footed when she, Christine and the abusers stepped out of the car. Before entering the compound she felt a lot of gravel under her feet. It is correct that in 1984 there was gravel all over the place.
The compound she was brought into smelled moldy, like it hadn't been used for a long time. This seems likely, as the champignon factory had been abandoned since 1972.
X1's overall description of the champignon factory where Christine was murdered is accurate. The former owner and his son could step by step find themselves in the description given by X1; from stepping out of the car to the location where Christine had been murdered. The son of the former owner of the champignon factory to Zembla (Dutch TV), 'De X-dossiers - Part I' (March 11, 2003): "The doors. We had very special, hand-made doors. Old doors with ornaments, which she described perfectly. She knew all that. She drew the chimney and the living room. It matched quite well. The chimney looked like it. She drew the rose window. A rose window is a rose window. It could well be our rose window. What she told about the champignoniere was accurate. I showed the description [of X1] to one of my brothers. That girl had to have been there. There's no other way." 1999, Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, Annemie Bulte and Douglas De Coninck, 'De X-Dossiers', p. 244-245: "The son is responsible for a stir when the texts [descriptions of the champignoniere of X1 and an inspector at the scene. They differ] are presented to him. 'That police officer has not been inside there, your witness X1 was'... The police officer in question, Jacques Dekock, is summoned that evening and immediately confronted with the son. The confrontation doesn't last long. It's true, he admits. He was so dismayed by the body that evening that he hardly looked at the rest of the building. The complex was demolished in 1989. Nowhere information is available about how the building looked in 1984. It was such a complex clew of houses, hangers, driveways, halls and basements that all who would try to do a little guessing on describing the place would be seen through immediately. And that is what is so bizarre. The inspectors just couldn't figure it out how X1 told them that she got there by car, stepped out, stumbled... The son of the owner had no problems with this. Almost immediately he could tell exactly through where X1 entered the building and how she reached the basement. That she stumbled in the hall is logical, he says. More people used to do that. By rebuilding two houses into one, a connection had been created with two stairs: the first one going down, then up again. 'In reality she was in the kitchen', the son deducts from the description of the wallpaper and the tiles - which also is perfectly accurate. He went through it with his family. 'There are things we read in her testimony that reminded us of details that we ourselves had long forgotten, like the motif on the tiles', he later says. Indeed, from the kitchen there was a separate doorway to the basement. And those flesh hooks? Yet another detail that only now recalls memories. 'Of course, then she was in the scullery', the son says. His uncle made meat pies and had created a sort of industrial kitchen in the adjacent building. With a pen in his hand the son draws the route that X1 must have travelled that night. The rugged wooden table, the rain barrel... Yes, yes, his father had left that when he moved out. It is extraordinarily, no question about it."
In 1984, a tampon with blood on it was found in a building located 30 feet away from the basement in which Christine had been murdered. This matches X1's 1996 testimony that blood in the vagina of Christine had been absorbed with a tampon. The blood type matched that of Christine's. A DNA test was in process in 1999, just as a DNA test on a cigarette butt that had been found at the murder site. However, Van Espen closed the investigation before the results could be made available. Burned notebooks and a satchel belonging to Christine were found in the same building, disproving claims from magistrates that this building was not accessible at the time of the murder. By confusing the description of the building and the basement, these magistrates had first claimed that X1's description of the murder site wasn't correct and that the bloody tampon was irrelevant. However, they were later forced to recant this argument as X1 had always made a clear distinction between the building where the abuse and torture began, and the basement where Christine was ultimately murdered.
In the last room X1 said she and Christine had been brought, she had seen a rope and a jerrycan. The police report at the time stated that a rope and a jerrycan had been found in the room where Christine had been found.
According to X1, candles were the only source of light in the building. A candle was among the items found at the murder location.
Christine's body had been found lying face down, arching back because a metal strand had been tied from her neck to her wrists and on to her ankles. X1 had mentioned how her Christine had been tied up in this same way and with a metal strand.
According to X1, Christine was set on fire while lying tied up on the ground. The autopsy report of Christine Van Hees showed that her body had been burned to such a degree that it initially was hard to tell her gender.
X1 described how one of Christine's wrists was penetrated by a "a metal bar... hollow inside... 30 centimeters long". Although the re-readers tried to deny the existence of a wound to Christine's left wrist, the first police commissioner to describe the scene wrote in his official report: "A nail is planted in the left wrist" and indicated that it had been taken from one of the numerous racks that were located in the building. Reading the testimony of X1, the former owner and his family also immediately thought about the racks and estimated the length of these hollow tubes at "30 or 40 centimeters". The "nails" in these racks indeed were thin hollow tubes, which at one time supported the shelves with growing mushrooms. Investigators and magistrates tried to spin the story by claiming that X1 had spoken about a "crucifixion" and specifically a "nail". Earlier, they had tried to claim that no object had penetrated the wrist of Christine. However, they could not convince the officer who had found the body of Christine to change his initial 1984 report.
According to X1, Michel Vander Elst was the one who beat the nail-like object through Christine's wrist with a hammer. A hammer was found at the location where Christine had been murdered.
The girl X1 talked about having been murdered was "Chrissie", full name Christine. She gave this name and details about the murder before De Baets and team could match it with the Christine Van Hees murder. Coincidentally, all other details also matched the story of X1.

One wonders how Jean-Claude Van Espen and his aides were able to conclude that X1 could never have been present at the murder of Christine, but that's exactly what they did. Their arguments, which can be read in the 'victim-witnesses' appendix, have been completely discredited. The X1-Christine Van Hees dossier should never have been closed.

Katrien de Cuyper, from Antwerp region:
The 15 year old Katrien de Cuyper disappeared in the evening of December 17, 1991 in Antwerp, after having last been seen making a phone call in the cafe les Routiers (the Truck Drivers). She was found dead 6 months later, on June 22, 1992. The autopsy showed that she had been murdered soon after her kidnapping. Those responsible were never caught.

On February 2, 1997, X1 recognized Katrien de Cuyper from a series of pictures shown to her. She explained how this girl had been taken to a castle and was murdered by a group of individuals that included Tony, Nihoul and Bouty (109). Before she was killed, X1 had noticed that Katrien lacked the routine of the more experienced girls. She thought this girl had been recruited by Tony.

After X1 had given a description of the castle and the route she had travelled, the investigators were able to find the domain in question: Castle Kattenhof in 's Gravenwezel, owned by the de Caters family (110). It turned out that this family owned property in Knokke in streets where X1 had already pointed out some apartments where she had been abused (111). Baron Patrick de Caters, a co-owner of the de Caters domain, is a member of Cercle de Wallonië, together with Etienne Davignon, Prince Philippe de Chimay, Count Jean-Pierre de Launoit (vice-Président Cercle de Lorraine), Elio Di Rupo and Aldo Vastapane. All of these men have been accused of child abuse at some point, although it must be stated that some of the accusations are more reliable than others. Additionally, next to the de Caters domain, the castle of Axel Vervoordt can be found. Vervoordt is a famous art collector, who counts international pop stars and businessmen among his clientele. He too has been accused of pedophilia. More on that later.

The description X1 gave of Katrien was not the most convincing in the world, although the length and hair color of the girl she had seen did approximately match those of Katrien de Cuyper. In any case, the conclusion of the investigators appointed to this specific sub-dossier that Katrien de Cuyper in no way could have been X1's Katrien is definitely an exaggeration. However, the most telling aspect of the X1-Katrien de Cuyper case is not the conclusion of the researchers.

During the observation of Tony Vandenbogaert, X1's former pimp, it had become known that this person was in continuous contact with a gendarme officer from Antwerp. They would regularly call or email each other. But interestingly, after this fact had already become known, this particular gendarme officer was appointed to a leading position in the investigation into this same Tony. De Baets and his team reminded their superiors that this was an obvious conflict of interest. However, no changes were made, and this gendarme officer became one of those responsible for dismissing the possibility that the Katrien described by X1 couldn't possibly have been Katrien de Cuyper (in whose murder Tony was implicated by X1) (112). Another interesting fact about the Katrien de Cuyper case was that in mid 1999, when the Dutch police put together a catalog of pictures found at the Zandvoort home of pedophile

The pictures on the left and right show Katrien de Cuyper in approximately the final year of her life. The central picture shows the girl from the network. The mouth, the nose, the lines underneath her eyes, the shape of the face; even the eyes and eyebrows are far from incompatible. Only the hair has a different color, but there are explanations for that. Click picture to enlarge.       Gerrie Ulrich, there was a porn photo in there of a girl which closely resembled Katrien de Cuyper (113). Among the pictures and documents found at Ulrich's were order forms to make requests for specific forms of child pornography. An investigation showed that Ulrich regularly donated large sums of money to a post office box located above the cafe in Antwerp (The Truck Drivers) where Katrien De Cuyper had last been seen making a phone call. Two Dutch porn firms were located at this address: Studio De Pauw and X-Kiss (114). Whether or not Katrien de Cuyper was found among the pictures in Ulrich's home, in
2004, the District Attorney's office in Antwerp closed the case by stating that the picture in Ulrich's home was a boy, after having been shown another picture -allegedly a photoshop- of "Katrien" with the body of boy (115). Now seriously, does the girl in the central picture even remotely look like a boy?


The Katrien de Cuyper case might not have been as powerful as the previous three, but it certainly remains interesting. And also in this case there's evidence of a cover up.

Who backed up the claims of X1
As already mentioned, in 1998, prosecutor of the king Jean Soenen stated the following on Belgian national television:"... the testimonies of Regina Louf, alias X1, have been closed definitively. As an overall conclusion it can be stated that all her testimonies have been totally unbelievable and the

Court documents filmed by Zembla showing the quote below in Dutch. It's also possible to largely read "Regina had this relationship WITH her consent and not AGAINST her will."       [inaudible] of pure fantasy." (116)

This has since become the consensus view on X1. However, it's a lie. Even if one only pays attention to the official conclusions of the Veronique Dubrulle, Carine Dellaert, Christine Van Hees and Katrien de Cuyper cases, even then it not only has to be acknowledged that it is a fact that Tony Vandenbogaert had sex with X1 since she was at least 12 years old, but also that her parents approved of this relationship. According to the Soenen's own Gent Law Court, in 1998:

"It has been established that Regina, between her
twelfth and sixteenth year, had a sexual relationship with a much older and grown man, named Antoine V... Her mother knew about this, allowed the relationship and even encouraged it. Her mother at least felt a platonic love for this same V."

This was the unescapable conclusion from information provided by X1, followed by confrontations with Tony and her parents. However, after these three were forced to admit
parts of X1's story, they had to come up with an excuse. That excuse became that X1 -as a 12 year old girl- had taken the actual initiative for the relationship and had pressured her parents into giving Tony a key of the house. As lame as this excuse may sound, Soenen and the Gent Law Court were more than happy to incorporate this excuse into their final conclusion as an undisputed fact: "Regina had this relationship WITH her consent and not AGAINST her will." Soenen's aide, substitute magistrate Nicole        
Left: X1's mother in the late 1970s. Mid and right: X1's parents in 1998, claiming complete ignorance on everything their daughter is talking about. They stated otherwise during interrogations.
De Rouck, repeated this "fact" on national television and added that these events had happened too long ago for Tony still to be prosecuted.

[Dig]

If you read the newspapers you would think otherwise, but X1's statements about her childhood in Gent and Knokke have been confirmed by many witnesses. Here's a list: 1.   Tony:    Admitted himself that he had sex with X1 since she was 12 years old (ignoring the testimonies that he already raped X1 at her grandmother's house almost a decade before) and that he had been given a key of the house to enter whenever he pleased (117).
2.   X1's mother:   Besides "admitting" that her 12 or 13 year old daughter had pressured her into giving Tony a key of the house, she confirmed that her daughter indeed had a sexual relationship with Tony (118).
3.   X1's father:   Admitted that Tony came into the house a lot more than he had previously stated. Also admitted that Tony picked Regina up from school and that he took her places (119).
4.   Marleen van Herreweghe:   Classmate who X1 said should have seen some of the abuse in Knokke and Gent. Marleen didn't confirm the abuse in Knokke, but did state that "there were sexual contacts between X1, that Tony, the mother of X1 and the housekeeper." (120)
5.   Carine Verniers:    Housekeeper of X1's mother in the 1980s who apparently didn't do a very good job, as the home of X1 has generally been described as dirty and messy. Pregnant for the first time when she was 18 years old and ended up with 4 children from 3 different men. She was in therapy for a while.
Unaware that a camera was taping her confrontation with X1, Verniers accidentally confirmed during a break that Tony, the mother and X1 all had a sexual relationships with each other. She also stated that she didn't believe that X1 was lying. After X1 pushed a little bit, Verniers also confirmed that she suddenly left the house after there were indications that her 18 months old child had been abused. When investigators tried to interview the by then 16 year old daughter, the confrontations ended in panic attacks and denial. No follow-up investigation was carried out.
In March 1997, investigators found out that Verniers had a lot of phone conversations with Marleen van Herreweghe. On one day Verniers received 38 telephone calls from acquaintances who also contacted Marleen that same day. The investigators suspected that an effort was made to get the stories of these two women straight (121).
6.   "Odette" (pseudonym):    "Odette" was a mistress of Tony V. in the 1980s. She confirmed that Tony often visited the mother of X1 and that she assumed that Tony had an affair with her. Odette: "I myself was kind of hungry for sex and like Tony there was no one better in bed... He tried to get to know everything about you... He liked to give people the feeling that he could blackmail them... I don't know what to think about the whole X1-affair and I find it hard to believe that Tony had something to do with those child murders. But still. When I read the book of X1, I cannot deny that everything she wrote about Tony is accurate, down to the smallest details. That was a shock to me." (122)
7.   X2:    At least two of the locations in Knokke where X2 claimed to have been abused were also pointed out by X1. Another street designated by X2 faced the hotel of X1's grandmother (123). Additionally, some of the abusers mentioned by X2 turned out to be the same as those mentioned by X1, like Vanden Boeynants, Baron de Bonvoisin and the Lippens brothers. There appears to be some confusion whether or not X1 recognized X2 from a picture (124).
8.   X3   Mentioned Vanden Boeynants, an abuser that was also reported by X1 and X2.
9.   X4   X4's parents lived nextdoor to one of the locations where X1 said she and Carine Dellaert had been abused (125). X4 correctly identified both Chantal S. and Nathalie C., youth friends of X1, as victims of the abuse network (126). In turn, Nathalie W. identified by name the mother and a sister of X4 (127).
10.   X7 (Nathalie C.):    Confirmed that she was the best friend of X1 between the age of 10 and 14, that she knew about X1's sexual relationship with Tony (X1 told her since the age of 12) and some of the abuse, that she knew about the sexual relationship between Tony and the mother of X1, that she had visited the house of X1's grandmother and that she was forbidden to visit the the first floor here (128).
11.   Nathalie W.    X1 identified Nathalie W. as a victim of the network (129) and apparently situated her at the sexclub Les Atrebates in the early 1980s (130). X1 also recognized her father (131). Nathalie W., on the other hand, correctly identified the pimp of X1 as "Anthony" and as a friend of Nihoul (whom she also knew) (132). Apparently, both X1 and Nathalie W. independently referred to Nihoul as "Mich" (133). Additionally, X4 identified Nathalie W. while Nathalie W. identified the mother and a sister of X4 by name.
12.   Chantal S.:    Confirmed the abuse of X1 at her grandmother's hotel-villa in Knokke. She remembered only one name, "Monsieur", which turned out to be correct, judging from X1's testimony. Like X7, Chantal gave many details which could be found in the testimonies of others, for example that she was forbidden to cry during the abuse or that she was not allowed to go to the first floor (134). X4 recognized Chantal S. as a victim of the network.
13.   Anja D.:    Classmate of X1 in the early 1980s. Knew about sexual relationship with Tony and that he brought her places (135).
14.   Kristelle M.:    Classmate of X1 in the early 1980s. Confirmed X1's relationship with Tony and that X1 had been made pregnant by this man. Indicated that X1 knew Carine Dellaert (136).
15.   "Fanny V." (pseudonym):    Classmate of Carine Dellaert. Confirmed X1's story about Carine Dellaert and stated that X1 had the same introvert attitude as Carine (137).
16.   Parents of a classmate:   In 1979, X1 mentioned to a classmate the abuse that was going on at her grandmother's hotel-villa. After this girl told her parents, X1 was invited over to retell her story. Knowing that X1 could never know all these details without having experienced them, the parents informed the principal of the school her daughter and X1 went to. X1 went to the principal, a nun, to repeat the story and showed the bruises in her neck. The nun told X1 that she was "a fantasizer" and called up her grandmother. Besides being heavily punished, X1 was sent back to her parents in Gent in an effort to stop the rumors that were going round the neighborhood by now. When X1 disappeared from school, the parents of X1's classmate assumed that she had been taken up in a child protection program. However, more than 10 years later they found out that this had not been the case. The girl, nor her parents were asked to testify about X1. (138)
17.   Mieke:    Girl from the network who went to live with X1 and her husband in 1998. She was never asked to testify, but apparently could verify many aspects of X1's story. She is not to be confused with Marie-Theresa "Mieke" from X1's testimony on Christine Van Hees. (139)


Dismantling the investigation
The initial investigation into Dutroux and Nihoul was headed by Michel Bourlet, the prosecutor of the king in the Neufchateau district, and examining magistrate Jean-Marc Connerotte. These two men already had gained somewhat of a martyr status, because several years before the Dutroux case they had been taken off the investigation into the murder of the socialist leader Andre Cools, apparently right before being able to solve the case. Then, in 1996, when they finally found two missing girls -alive- they became national heroes overnight.

It was Connerotte who appointed BOB officer Patriek De Baets and his team to the X1 case in early September 1996. In this function De Baets worked directly for Connerotte and could work relatively autonomous from his superiors in the BOB and the overall gendarmerie. The first major change in the investigation occurred on October 14, 1996. Connerotte was removed as examining magistrate, the reason being that he had attended a fund raising

Jean-Marc Connerotte, sacked from the Dutroux investigation before it ever really got off the ground.        for parents of missing children. The problem here was that Sabine and Laetitia, the girls he had personally rescued from Dutroux's dungeon, were present at this meeting as guests of honor. The lawyers of Dutroux and Nihoul had gotten wind of this visit and began a successful procedure to remove Connerotte, arguing that the examining magistrate had shown with this visit that he wasn't carrying out his investigation objectively enough.

Although many wonder how Connerotte could have
been so careless, especially with such a sensitive case, there are quite a number of extenuating circumstances. For example, Connerotte, who was on leave and had married earlier that day, made sure to pay for the plate of spaghetti he was given, made sure that he did not to meet with the girls or their parents, declined to accept flowers from Laetitia and Sabine, and handed over the fountain pen the guests had been given to a judicial registrar (140). Also, Connerotte barely stayed an hour, but with this visit he and Bourlet (who also went) made yet another effort to change the consensus view that the justice department wasn't interested in parents of missing children or victims of child abuse.


All these facts didn't matter and Connerotte was replaced by the inexperienced examining magistrate Jacques Langlois. As rumors of a cover-up had already begun to spread, the removal sparked massive protests all around the country. In Brussels alone, more than 300,000 people went to the streets to protest (the famous White March), but it changed nothing. As the prosecutor of the King, Bourlet was not forced to step down. However, the examining magistrate does the majority of the in depth investigations. Therefore Bourlet's
hands were largely tied when Langlois came in and immediately decided that he didn't want to hear anything about child abuse networks. Langlois became one of those responsible for dismantling the whole Dutroux investigation by ignoring countless leads and sending his investigators off into all kinds of bogus issues.

A second major change occurred in early December 1996. Until that point, as said before, the BOB officers working with the various X-witnesses worked independently from the BOB and gendarmerie hierarchy. They had a supporting role in the Dutroux investigation and answered directly to Bourlet and Connerotte, and later on to the much less interested Langlois. However, on December 1, all the inspectors working on the sub-dossiers of the Dutroux affair, including the X-Dossiers, were brought together in a large secured building just outside Brussels. Gendarmerie Commandant Jean-Luc Duterme was appointed head of this investigating cell and was able to heavily influence the ongoing investigations.

With Langlois and Duterme in place the overall Dutroux investigation began to take a dramatic turn for the worse. In complete contrast with Connerotte and Bourlet, Langlois        
Michel Bourlet, prosecutor of the king in Neufchateau since 1984. Has always been on the side of Connerotte, De Baets and X1, even though his hands were tied. Had a hilarious run in with Baron de Bonvoisin, one of the most notorious suspects in the X-Dossiers, very early on in the investigation. De Bonvoisin had arranged a meeting in his castle with some of the Dutroux case investigators, during which he called Bourlet and tried to make an appointment. Bourlet pretended to accept a meeting for the next day, but never showed up.
did not communicate directly with the interviewers of the various X-witnesses, but went to Commandant Duterme instead (141). While Duterme secretly, and without having the proper authority, began to "reread" the testimonies of the X-witnesses, Langlois dived head on into leads that Connerotte and Bourlet had suspected from day one to be disinformation (142). The major examples would be:

the digs in Jumet, which were inspired by the bogus claims of convicted pedophile Jean-Paul Raemaekers;
the November 1996 Oliver Trusgnach case in which high level politicians Elio Di Rupo and Jean-Pierre Grafe were implicated as pedophiles;
the prominent December 12, 1996 search of the Gnostic-Luciferian (Satanic) Abrasax cult.

The Jumet digs and the Oliver Trusgnach case were complicated disinformation schemes, ultimately meant to provide "skeptics" with examples that Neufchateau investigators could easily be fooled by captured child abusers and fantasists who make up stories. In fact, in a truly Machiavellian way, De Baets and his team were forced, without knowing anything about the case, to take up a primary role in the Trusgnach case the day before all the (soon to be discredited) accusations would be published in the press. Police commissioner Georges Marnette played a central role in both of these disinformation schemes, about which you can read in detail in 'the accused' appendix. Why there? Because both X2 and Nathalie W. identified Marnette as an abuser in the network (143).

The Abrasax story is less complicated. The following well known newspaper report, published on December 29, 1996 by the Sunday Times, is one of the best examples in which some of the most accurate (albeit hard to believe) information appears to have been strategically mixed in with a central piece of disinformation. "SATANIC sects involved in bizarre rites including human sacrifice are being linked by Belgian police with this summer's string of grisly paedophile murders in which at least four children died.

Five witnesses came forward last week and described how black masses were held, at which children were killed in front of audiences said to have included prominent members of Belgian

Picture of Abrasax headquarters in the small, stuffy home of Francis "Anubis- Moloch" Desmedt and Dominique "Nahema-Nephthys" Kindermans where maybe 20 persons could be involved in a ritual at the same time. The profoundly negative Abrasax cult consisted of four institutes: The Belgian Church of Satan, the Wicca center, the Order for Luciferian Initiation and the Gnostic church. Psychotherapy was also practiced here.
Keep the following in mind: like Jumet didn't disprove the existence of a network surrounding Nihoul and the Trusgnach case didn't disprove high level involvement in abuse networks, so the Abrasax disinformation doesn't prove (high level) Satanism doesn't exist. It's important to note that there are innumerable and very similar reports of cultist or Satanic practices in combination with child abuse. Going through US and UK newspaper archives since the late 1970s will turn up thousands of (mainly superficial) reports on ritual abuse and Satanism. In the X-Dossiers there also appear a fair dose of reports on Satanism and ritual abuse, which is not necessarily the same thing. You can read these reports in the 'victims and witnesses' appendix. More information on this aspect in part 15.        society. One investigator said it was "like going back to the Middle Ages".

The tentacles of the sects appear to have stretched beyond the borders of Belgium to Holland, Germany and even America. The witnesses - several of whom claim to have received death threats - say that young babies were handed over by their parents willingly in return for money. In other cases the victims were abducted. [PEHI note: The incest aspect should definitely have been described here. The "abductions" should also have been explained in more detail]

The witnesses, who are believed to have identified the sites where the masses took place to the police, said organisers had also photographed participants and threatened to hand over their pictures if they went to the police.

The investigation centres on Abrasax [the crucial piece of disinformation], a self-styled institute of black magic, whose headquarters in the village of Forchies-la-Marche in southern Belgium was raided by police last week. Human skulls were among the objects removed from the run-down building.

... Police have long suspected that Dutroux, a convicted paedophile, was part of an international network which abducted children, sexually abused them and then killed them. Their activities appear to have been financed by the sale of pornographic videos filmed by members of the ring.

... Investigators are still trying to determine the precise nature of the links between the Satanists and the paedophile groups.

In a separate twist, a Belgian newspaper claimed yesterday that a former European commissioner was among a group of judges, senior politicians, lawyers and policemen who attended orgies held in a Belgian chateau and organised by Michel Nihoul, one of Dutroux's alleged accomplices. La Derniere Heure, which claimed to have a guest list, did not name the commissioner but said he "came with a girl, Josette, nicknamed Jojo, the Bomb".

Everything mentioned in this article is accurate, meaning that this is what a number of anonymous (to the public) witnesses were testifying about in Neufchateau at that
moment. Although not all spoke about Satanism, at least half of them did. But besides the exaggerated focus on Satanism, the disinformation here is that this whole Satanic or sectarian aspect of the investigation centered around the Abrasax cult. The X-Dossiers had absolutely nothing to do with Abrasax and even though there might have been some circumstantial Dutroux/Weinstein- related evidence against the cult to justify a house search some day (144), there's no good reason why, with all those other promising leads, this questionable and highly delicate one had to be picked out for a premature house search. Unless, of course, the aim was to discredit the whole investigation, which is what Connerotte and his chief investigator De Baets have publicly stated (145). The basic idea was to discredit any future claims of Satanism and extreme abuse by bringing up the (soon to be discredited) Abrasax affair. This motive also becomes obvious when one learns that Duterme, with the consent of Langlois, scrapped all of the 43 house searches recommended by De Baets and Bourlet. Their list was based on the most promising information supplied by the X-witnesses, which indeed included "a former European commissioner... judges, senior politicians, lawyers and policemen" (146).


By the time the Abrasax story hit the news, it was clear that Duterme was in town. He had gathered a small group of vicious debunkers around him, the most prominent being Eddy Verhaeghen, Baudouin Dernicourt and Philippe Pourbaix. When the main interviewer of Nathalie W. suffered a stroke in late January 1997, Duterme replaced this person and his partner with Dernicourt and Pourbaix. Nathalie had trusted her first interviewers and although testifying was a huge mental challenge for her, she did provide certain names and details that matched with those provided by other X-witnesses (147). This all changed when Dernicourt and Pourbaix went after Nathalie like a couple of attack dogs. They managed to completely destabilize the victim in a matter of one or two hearings. In March Nathalie dropped from the investigation (148).

The other favorite BOB officer of Duterme, Eddy Verhaeghen, played a key role in discrediting X1. In July 1997, Duterme's first version of the re-reads of the X1 interviews was done. Based on these re-reads De Baets and his team were fired later that month, and Verhaeghen became the new chief interviewer of X1. X1 describes how things changed:

"The two BOB officers with whom I have to work from now on come to pick me up for an 'informal' talk... The three of us go and sit at a table in a village cafeteria... Eddy voices my suspicions in the following words: 'We don't care if it is true or not. The only thing that matters to me is my paycheck at the end of the month.' I smile worryingly. Am I psychic after all? The discussion proceeds in the expected direction. The security- and investigative brigade of the gendarmerie thinks that the ball is in my court. I am the one who has to come up with evidence, they won't do any field- or investigative work anymore. In these words they ask for my cooperation. When I state that I do not have the authority to conduct searches, nor that I can come up with evidence if they are not willing to investigate, they just laugh at me... Eddy begins to insinuate that it all couldn't have been so bad. Because, look, I have a husband and four kids, I have everything that I wish and also, I can laugh... 'Come on', Eddy says rather loud, 'you also enjoyed it, didn't you? You can't say that everything was bad? You were in love with Tony, weren't you?' After exactly one year of hearings, in which I was treated with respect, I politely try to explain my feelings. I wasn't 'in love' with him, I loved him; like a daughter loves her father [at least, that's what she tried to convince herself of as a young girl]..."

"I am only really disheartened when Eddy and his colleague interrogate my friend Tania. This happens in such a dehumanizing manner that I begin to feel sick. Her hearing is not recorded on video, and they know it. The two BOB officers eagerly use their power position to destabilize and intimidate Tania by bringing up her personal life. They question her in an office where every BOB officer walks in and out of, and where my supposedly well-protected dossiers are up for grabs. Tania asks what her personal life has to do with the case. After all, she did nothing more than encourage me to testify, and made the first telephone contact with Connerotte... Are you also a victim? Were you also in the network? You're not going to tell me that you didn't have anything to do with the network of Ginie? Have you known De Baets a long time? Was this really the first time you spoke to him, the 4th of September 1996? Are you sure you never were in the prostitution? Are you really sure? The discussion continues along these lines the whole afternoon. Tania is intimidated. Tania even became so scared that she comes to me in the late afternoon, looks silently at me for a while and then advises me to stop testifying. For the first time my friend understands my words just before she phoned up Connerotte in '96: 'This is too big, Tania, I can't do anything against my perpetrators." (149)

[Dig]

De Baets and his team were fired on charges that they would have manipulated X1 into saying things that they wanted to hear. Continuous leaks to the press were organized in the

January 2000, Patriek De Baets (left) and Aime Bille (right), leaving the Palace of Justice in Brussels after having been fully acquitted of any wrongdoing in working with the X-witnesses.        following months that were supposed to prove this accusation. However, an official investigation had also been launched and in 2000 the Court of Law in Brussels concluded that there was no evidence at all that De Baets and his team had been manipulating X1.

One of the main accusation against De Baets was that he had not filed an official report of the fact that X1 misidentified Christine Van Hees from a series of pictures. This turned out to be lie, as this report, PV 117.487, December 6, 1997, had been written and properly filed by his assistant interviewer Philippe
Hupez. Hupez had written many other official reports about his work with X1, so chances that this was a honest mistake of Duterme are pretty low.


And even the simple accusation of the rereaders that X1 had misidentified Christine Van Hees is misleading, since in the supposedly missing PV 117.487 Hupez explained it point blank that X1 intentionally didn't point out Christine.

"X1 testified to have recognized Christine between the pictures presented to her, but does not identify the picture she recognizes... We conclude from this: 1. the picture P10, pointed out by X1, is not the victim she spoke about, Christine. 2. But the photo of the victim was among those shown to X1 [5 in total], which she intentionally didn't point out."

Of course, it's reasonable to be skeptical about the claim of Hupez and De Baets that X1 "intentionally" didn't point out Christine. It seems that either they tried to manipulate the investigation, or it must have been very clear to them that X1 was not cooperating. According to X1, it's the latter. She explained:

"In order to judge objectively what happened there that morning, you need to be able to take a look at the tape of that hearing... you would see that after I pointed to the picture P10 I looked at De Baets and Hupez with an exultant look on my face. Like: and now it's your turn!... It was 7 o'clock in the morning. I was sick and tired of it, I wanted to go home. If I had pointed out Christine... De Baets undoubtedly would have continued for another hour or three. In my stubbornness I wanted to make them feel that they should have given me more time. I take comfort in one thought though: if the successors of De Baets had not seized this opportunity to seed doubt in everything, they undoubtedly would have found something else." (150)

Until the video of X1's interview is made public there might be some lingering doubt about the explanations given by X1 and the interviewers. However, their stories are coherent, the interviewers were acquitted from accusations that they manipulated, and it has not been them who continually changed their story. The only thing the interviewers can be accused of is of having pushed this interview with X1, which started on 22:55 PM, too far.

There are numerous other examples of manipulations by the rereaders. The authors of 'The X-Dossiers' filled an entire book with them. In a number of chapters they quote large portions of the reports written by the rereaders and compare them to the original testimonies.

Although in most cases it seemed intentional, one of the first things that became obvious was that Duterme nor the other rereaders fully mastered the Dutch language; the language in which X1 testified. Duterme would continually ask questions about passages which would be completely clear to anyone speaking perfect Dutch (like the author of this article). Duterme probably made one of his biggest mistakes when he concluded from one of X1's statements that her grandmother had also been present at the murder of Christine Van Hees. The only thing that X1 had said here was: 'My grandmother also had those in her scullery' [referring to meat hooks she had seen in the champignon factory] (151).

In another case, Duterme did not understand that the word "bus" has more than one meaning in Dutch. He apparently knew that it could refer to a vehicle that drives on the road, but forgot that it can also refer to a small container in which things can be put (a "can" or "small box", usually metal). Describing the location where Christine Van Hees had been murdered, X1 at some point spoke about a "bus" containing a liquid. In another place she called this object a "jerrycan". Duterme wrote next to the sentence containing "jerrycan" that this is a different object than the "bus containing liquid" described earlier, which is complete madness (152).

Baudouin Dernicourt, who had come up with the false statement that De Baets and Hupez had not filed an official report of X1 misidentifying Christine Van Hees, made even worse "mistakes". Pertaining to Carine "Clo" Dellaert which X1 was to identify from a set of pictures, X1 at one point stated: "Not that I saw, but..." and "... she wasn't in there also". In Dernicourt's translations this became: "I know that I saw her..." and "Wasn't she in there also?" (153) Just incredible.

There are numerous other incorrect statements from the rereaders that were echoed all over the media. Take the following two sentences from a widely-read newspaper report published on February 5, 2004, just before the final Dutroux-Nihoul trial:

"On pictures of missing children which are presented to her, she [X1] identifies Loubna Benaissa, Kim and Ken Heyrman and the Dutch Naatje Zwaren de Zwarenstein as victims of the network. Later it would come out that Loubna was murdered by the psychopath Patrick Derochette. Naatje van Zwaren de Zwarenstein turned out not to be missing at all. The investigators had been mistaken when they showed this picture to X1, it turned out." (154)

Now let's take a look at the facts. Loubna was a 9 year old girl when she disappeared in August 1995. She was found dead on March 5, 1997 in the home of the pedophile Patrick Derochette. Four days before this event, X1 had been talking about children she had witnessed being killed in snuff movies. De Baets at some point had asked if one of these children might have been Loubna, to which Regina's only answer was "could be". The rereaders somehow interpreted this as meaning "yes". The rereaders went on to claim that in this same interview X1 had also stated to have witnessed the murder of Kim and Ken Heyrman. This is also false. X1 had spoken about a brother and sister. De Baets had asked X1 outside of the official interview if this might have been Kim and Ken. Again X1's only answer was: "Could be, I don't know." (155)

Besides echoing the false statements of the rereaders, most newspapers didn't report a whole lot about the the Loubna Benaissa and Kim and Ken Heyrman cases. The parents of both of these children had been treated very badly by the investigators. In case of Loubna Benaissa, separate leads to the law clerk of Jean-Claude Van Espen (head of the X1-Van Hees dossier), Christine Van Hees case and the Dutroux-Nihoul network had been ignored (156). In case of Kim and Ken Heyrman, their mother, Tiny Mast, became a good friend of X1. She stated:

"I don't trust those people at all. It is they who lost the sweater of Ken. The kidnapper had sent me that sweater, probably to scare me, I assume. In a normal country that is a hyper-important element in the investigation. Traces might be be found on it. Well, they just made that sweater disappear. It is they who at a certain point told me in my face that I was the murderer and that I'd better fess up. I can tell hundreds of stories which, if I compare them with what the Verwilghen commission labeled as "mistakes", really stretch the imagination. Those guys are so aggressive and so inhumane that I sometimes feel that they are part of the same clique as those who took away my children. I believe Regina Louf, I really do." (157)

For a change, the newspaper's claim that X1 had identified Naatje van Zwaren de Zwarenstein is accurate. This happened during the same interview in which X1 recognized Katrien de Cuyper. However, this case had no priority status and X1 never said more about Naatje than: "a girl of which I think I have seen her at one point" (158). Also, the newspaper's claim that Naatje "turned out not to be missing at all" is extremely misleading for a number of reasons.

The 14 year old Naatje went missing on March 12, 1976, three days after one of her alleged friends, Paulette N., had also disappeared. The media made no big deal out of the event, especially not when Naatje turned up again on April 7 of that year in the Netherlands. However, friends of Naatje told a disturbing story to investigators, a story which sounded awfully similar to the one of the X-witnesses 20 years later. They named Naatje's riding school, coincidentally the same as Christine Van Hees', as one of the locations through which a child prostitution ring operated. This ring, in which Naatje and Paulette had ended up, apparently provided services to several foreign embassies in Brussels and had connections in the Netherlands and England. One of the girls who knew Naatje and Paulette was Joëlle J. Besides regular abuse and beatings, Joëlle also spoke about forced abortions, orgies at which children were cut to pieces and people who had been beaten up or killed for having spoken about the network. Other girls from this abuse network, Marie V. and Mireille D.B., backed up portions of the story of Joëlle J. Immediately after Naatje's return, she moved with her parents to the United States, but died there in 1980 in a traffic accident. (159)

Another argument that was used against X1 was the claim that Christine Van Hees' mother had tricked X1 during a confrontation on March 3, 1998. Van Hees' mother spoke about her daughter's trip to Canada just weeks before she was murdered, and asked X1 if Christine had mentioned anything to her about this trip. According to substitute magistrate Paule Somers, "X1 immediately remembered what Christine had told about that. But mother Van Hees tricked X1, because Christine had never been to Canada." This was an argument that severely impacted the credibility of X1 in the eyes of those who until then were still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

In early 1999, the Brussels lawyer Patricia Vandersmissen became interested in defending X1 against the constant barrage of press attacks. But before she would commit herself to the X1 case, she asked permission to access a portion of the X1-dossier to check a number of statements from X1 that had appeared in the press. One of those she was most interested in was X1's supposed confirmation of Christine's fictitious trip to Canada. The confrontation, which was led by Danny De Pauw (who betrayed De Baets and team) and the notoriously inaccurate translator Baudouin Dernicourt, was recorded on video and in writing. According to Vandersmissen:

"Antoinette Vanhoucke [mother Van Hees]: 'And in the mean time she made a big trip. She goes to Canada. Did she never speak about that?'
Regina Louf [X1]: 'I don't think we ever had the chance, to speak about those things.'"

"That's what has been written down. Nothing else. I read the official report from front to back and from back to front. I restarted three times, continually looking if that mother had brought up the topic again. But no. This is everything that has been said about the trip to Canada: nothing. Regina Louf says that she knows nothing about the trip to Canada. The truth has been reversed for the public." (160)

And so the disinformation game continues. There are so many examples and different aspects to discuss that the authors of the book 'The X-Dossiers' were able to fill a 500+, large page, small type book with them. To summarize, the tactics used by the rereaders can be found in almost any other disinformation scheme:
Most statements of X1 were ignored.
A number of statements were invented and attributed to X1.
Bizarre conclusions were drawn from isolated passages of the testimony of X1.
Small details in X1's testimony that appear to be wrong were given much more attention than any of the more important aspects that appeared to be right.
One-sided leaks were organized to the media.
De Baets and his team were portrayed as worshippers of X1, who in turn was portrayed as a self-absorbed aspiring cult leader.
All searches at individuals and locations named by the X-witnesses were canceled. Except for a few bogus locations, searches were only carried out at the homes of the victim-witnesses and at those who supported them.

Questionable and extremely compromised researchers
It is a fairly well known fact that Nihoul was a BOB informant (161). Details about Nihoul's direct and indirect connections to officers heading his own investigation are virtually unknown.



Above you can see the basic final structure of the X-Dossier investigation. X1 worked with Eddy Verhaeghen and Danny De Pauw, who had replaced Patriek De Baets and Philippe Hupez. Coincidentally, Verhaeghen was one of Nihoul's runners during the time that this gangster was an informant to the BOB (162).

Victim Nathalie W. was forced to work with Baudouin Dernicourt and Philippe Pourbaix. They had replaced Theo Vandyck and Joël Gerard in early February 1997. Dernicourt has been tied to the terrorist CCC bombings (163), officially a radical communist group, but in reality a fascist Gladio operation, similar to the Gang of Nijvel (164).

The other X-witnesses were handled by other BOB officers, who, since December 1, 1996, had all been placed under the authority of Commandant Jean-Luc Duterme. Duterme had already made a name for himself in the 1980s as the right hand man of prosecutor Jean Depretre in the Gang of Nijvel investigation. Together they did a lot of damage to the investigation and persecuted officers who wanted to find out the truth. Depretre earlier played a key role in terminating the 1979 Montaricourt-Israel investigations, which involved a high level European-wide prostitution network (165). Depretre was accused by X2 of being involved in the child abuse network (166).

Jean-Luc Duterme had been appointed head of the Neufchateau cell by Lt.-Col. Jean-Marie Brabant, the commandant of the BOB in Brussels. Brabant, as well as Lt.-Col. Guido Torrez, head of the gendarmerie in Neufchateau, were Duterme's immediate superiors.

Just after Nihoul and Bouty had been arrested, Brabant was caught lying to examining magistrate Connerotte when he denied that the BOB had any earlier dossiers on Michel Nihoul or Annie Bouty. They had dossiers on both of them (167). Brabant apparently also lied to prosecutor Bourlet when he tried to explain to him that the Dutroux-Nihoul investigation was taking away resources from other important dossiers. Unfortunately for Brabant, not one of the investigators working for Neufchateau had been taken from Brabant's most important dossiers, like KB-Lux. That is, according to Patriek De Baets (168).

[Biggs]

blimmey, how disgusting, I will come back and read this one in full when I get the chance.

[Sonja]

And Hillary Clinton comes into this -where?

[Rock]

I read the whole article.  Now I know how they can keep 911 under raps. 

What a horrible world we live in.




Rock

[Dig]

Sonja, read the whole 100 pages:

http://www.pehi.eu/dutroux/Belgian_X_dossiers_of_the_Dutroux_affair.htm

[jerryweaver]

America is a protected child child abuse network. I'm talking about being cut.I've met 3 men who were horribly mutilated. 1 in 100 babies die outright from being cut.
The mental trauma is evident in every cut man if you watch them carefully.
The victim becomes the perp later in life. I talked to one woman who was soddomised
at the age of four by her uncle who first put her head in a vise. I flashed on the gompco clamp the mutilator used on me as she was talking. During this conversation I became inappropriatly aroused.
I grew up to love tortureing cats and dogs. I also had a ptsd episode about every time I saw someone with anything especially a finger cut off.
America and Israel are protected child abuse networks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Male and Female Genital mutilation is most prevailant in 1950-60 american and isreali babies.

http://mindcontrolforums.com/svali_speaks.htm#15
Denial Programming:

Denial programming begins with the first experiences the infant goes through in life. The child has been horrendously wounded and traumatized, yet the next morning, the adults around him are acting normally, as if nothing had happened. They are modeling a lifestyle of denial for the infant and young child. This is reinforced later by the child being told:

“It was just a bad dream” (oh, how the child wants to believe this lie. It makes the pain less to think it didn’t really happen)

“It’s just your imagination; it isn’t really happening” (which is again embraced as an escape from the horror). Denial will also be fed by the adults around the child telling them that they will never be believed if they disclose. There will be set ups to teach the child what they see and hear, and to teach the child to trust outside adults to tell them their reality.

http://sexasnatureintendedit.com/
Yet, right now, most American women have no idea how important the natural penis is because. . .

. . . they have never known the true lovemaking experience of natural intercourse. They have only experienced intercourse with circumcised men.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is very true. My own personal experience with a 10 year marriage was really bad.

My therapist is Patricia Robinnette
The Rape of Innocence

In 2006 Patricia wrote, designed and published a partial autobiography focusing on a subject few are aware of: female genital mutilation in the USA. Since that time she has met other women who were also circumcised as children in the USA.

Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance covered clitoridectomies until 1977 and female genital cutting was finally outlawed in the USA in 1996. Some still push the practice as a cosmetic surgery.

It is an unflattering chapter in our country's history that many would rather ignore. Patricia is certain that someday we will wake up out of our collective trance and see male circumcision with the same horror and disbelief that we currently reserve for female circumcision. On that day, boys too will at last be protected from this form of socially-sanctioned sexual abuse.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alex was talking yesterday about the behavior of The American Gelding.

I wonder if he would have Patricia on the show? http://www.patriciarobinett.com/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane, or worse.
- William S. Burroughs
Until they become conscious they will never rebel,
and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
-G. Orwell
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
- Charles Mackay
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
--- William Casey, Director CIA (Quote from internal staff meeting notes 1981)

[Jackson Holly]

I am a totally non~violent person ... I have never been in a fight, never in the military ... humanities major ... I am a laid back dude.

But I am here to tell you ... we need to hunt down these filthy vermin and rid the world of them ASAP. I mean it! We can't let this go on any longer, g-dammit.

I first read this sh*t in a David Icke book ... and I could not believe my eyes ... I had NO idea this level of pure sadistic EVIL could exist. I thought war was as bad as it could get . NO!

And then you find out just who MANY of these creatures are ... oh Jesus ... they are our government leaders, our business leaders and our royalty.

God ... what kind of a planet have you stranded us on?

[liko]

That was a hard read,so much pain.These people will burn for this.I can't say anymore right now,except you really want to know the leaders of the NWO here they are,& what is coming.We MUST really be in hell already.

[zafada]

I am a totally non~violent person ... I have never been in a fight, never in the military ... humanities major ... I am a laid back dude.

But I am here to tell you ... we need to hunt down these filthy vermin and rid the world of them ASAP. I mean it! We can't let this go on any longer, g-dammit.

I first read this sh*t in a David Icke book ... and I could not believe my eyes ... I had NO idea this level of pure sadistic EVIL could exist. I thought war was as bad as it could get . NO!

And then you find out just who MANY of these creatures are ... oh Jesus ... they are our government leaders, our business leaders and our royalty.

God ... what kind of a planet have you stranded us on?

I agree.  I wrote on another thread that I'd love to be a murderer.  However I'd only murder murderers.  These people should be hunted.  Hmm, maybe I can call myself a hunter instead once I get into the groove.

[sociostudent]

this is exactly why i dropped out of the sociology program at the college i was going to.  I couldn't stand knowing about this kind of stuff and knowing that i was going to be the devil's handmaiden...nope, couldn't do it. 

[liko]

this is exactly why i dropped out of the sociology program at the college i was going to.  I couldn't stand knowing about this kind of stuff and knowing that i was going to be the devil's handmaiden...nope, couldn't do it. 

If more people had a conscious like you,we would have no problems at all,i would do the same.

[BaronVonBongo]

It makes me feel sick. The worst of crimes is to hurt an innocent in any way. The bible has something to say on this,
 “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble. '
Wonder what Jesus would say faced with this systematic murderous, inhumane abuse of children?  (Not to 'bible bash')

I agree entirly with Jackson Holly's post too. This world is sick to the core.
Zafada, what you havn't  watched Dexter? Lol... don't get any ideas.
No these people must be brought to justice and never allowed to harm any body again by all means necessary, if they resist unto death fair play they die. The important thing is they be removed from society. Me I am strictly against the death penalty on so many grounds from economic to spiritual. Vengence is not a worthy motive, but it feels sooooo right. Hate consumes. Fundamentally though 2 wrongs do not make a right.

But hey what are we so suprised about we know the leaders are Satanic theological or non-theoligical. The burning care ceremony at Bohemian Groove ceremony is evidence enough of this fact. The innocent will always be the target of these people. They are truely diabolical. Be you a theological or non-theological truther we have one and the same goal to depose these people. If only the tabloids which exploit the suffering of families that have this happen actually printed the evidence for the systematic nature of this. People would all rise and destroy the system. In light of the truth it could not fail to collapse.

Is there a video in English with a compilation of such evidence that could be widely distributed and addresses issues for all western nations?

[Freeski]

Sick but interesting stuff and it ties into some stuff I've been looking into in Canada - namely the Cornwall, Ontario and Indian Residential School scandals. This Dutroux character is reminiscent, too, in technique, with the evil Bernardo-Homolka duo in Toronto.

I found the William Colby quote (in the opening paragraph of this piece) especially interesting for obvious reasons, but also because of its similarity to President Wilson's quote. Similar in message, yes, but what about the "intent" of the message?

Woodrow Wilson

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

William Colby - To John DeCamp of The Franklin Coverup

What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. This is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face.

It's almost as though Colby turned a sincere warning into an idle threat. Speaking of Wilson, I know very little about him but was he seen as a 'good president' in the eyes of the American masses?

[liko]

Sick but interesting stuff and it ties into some stuff I've been looking into in Canada - namely the Cornwall, Ontario and Indian Residential School scandals. This Dutroux character is reminiscent, too, in technique, with the evil Bernardo-Homolka duo in Toronto.

I found the William Colby quote (in the opening paragraph of this piece) especially interesting for obvious reasons, but also because of its similarity to President Wilson's quote. Similar in message, yes, but what about the "intent" of the message?

Woodrow Wilson

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

William Colby - To John DeCamp of The Franklin Coverup

What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. This is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face.

It's almost as though Colby turned a sincere warning into an idle threat. Speaking of Wilson, I know very little about him but was he seen as a 'good president' in the eyes of the American masses?

No,he was a fool.Woodrow Wilson was the president who gave the US the fed i believe,but apoligised to the American people for it later by saying  "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

[liko]

More on the disgusting MARC DUTROUX.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/dutroux/evil_1.html

[Loungeagainstthemachine]

I had a really hard time getting through that and kept trying to stop reading but something made me keep going. These poor girls went through hell and back, have seen the most atrocious things I have ever heard, and no one will defend them and prosecute the guilty.

MY stomach is sick and I will not lose this disgusting images from my head for quite some time. How anyone could do that to another human being... I will never understand.
 And the people covering it up... I wish there WAS a hell so they could all rot in it. f**king sickening.

[Freeski]

Belgium abuse charges ignored: retired priest
Saturday, April 24, 2010 | 12:59 PM ET
CBC News: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/04/24/belgium-bishop-sex-abuse.html

A retired priest in Belgium said he told church authorities years ago about allegations that the country's longest-serving bishop had sexually abused a boy, but the complaints were ignored.

Rik Deville told Belgian media he reported the allegations to Godfried Danneels, then archbishop ,15 years ago after he learned of the claims from a confidant of the boy's family.

Roger Vangheluwe was forced to resign Friday after admitting he sexually abused the child while serving as pastor and then bishop of the Flemish city Bruges.

Deville told Flemish broadcaster VTM he received no response to the allegations he relayed.

Norbert Bethune, another priest who was dismissed after a doctrinal conflict with superiors, said he was stonewalled seven years ago after bringing similar allegations against Roger Vangheluwe, involving 30 other victims, to the attention of Daneels.

"[The archbishop] was so angry at us, so negative that he did not want to hear anything," Bethune told The Associated Press.

Danneels said through a spokesman he had no recollections of the allegations at the time.

When he resigned, Vangheluwe, 73, expressed sorrow in a letter for having abused the boy.

"The victim is still scarred mentally," he said.

The Catholic Church in Belgium has a weak record of cracking down on sexual abusers in its ranks.

In 2000 it created a panel to look into abuse complaints, which quickly clashed with the church leadership. The panel has accused the church of tardiness in compensating victims.

Hundreds of people have come forward in recent months, including in Pope Benedict XVI's native Germany, accusing priests of raping and abusing them while bishops and other church higher-ups turned a blind eye.

This week, the Vatican has said it would do everything in its power to bring justice to abusive priests and implement "effective measures" to protect children.

On Saturday, a Vatican spokesman said the Catholic church is capable of healing the wounds inflicted on it by the clerical sex abuse scandal, but that the time had come for "truth, transparency and credibility."

With files from The Associated Press

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/04/24/belgium-bishop-sex-abuse.html#ixzz0m3GNasji

[jerryweaver]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BaM7H2GLI&feature=player_embedded
http://auntiepatricia.com/

So ,uh, I know this is an old thread.

 These issues stay with the survivors and the real people who have to deal emotionally with the knowledge of whats happening.

The reason for my visiting this thread and putting up these links is my therapist has been working on putting some healing/releasing technique videos together.

She has been working all week on it.

I thought some of the people at Prison Planet Forum might benefit from visiting her websites.

If enough Prison Planet Forum citizens like her material she has said it would please her to be on AJs show.

Best Regards

[Freeski]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BaM7H2GLI&feature=player_embedded
http://auntiepatricia.com/

So ,uh, I know this is an old thread.

 These issues stay with the survivors and the real people who have to deal emotionally with the knowledge of whats happening.

The reason for my visiting this thread and putting up these links is my therapist has been working on putting some healing/releasing technique videos together.

She has been working all week on it.

I thought some of the people at Prison Planet Forum might benefit from visiting her websites.

If enough Prison Planet Forum citizens like her material she has said it would please her to be on AJs show.

Best Regards

Interesting vid. Thanks!

[kita]

English BBC Documentary on Belgian Satanic Cult

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg61N86dUIE

[kita]

You can delete post above,these are better links to the BBC doco,about how the Elite covered their padeo,snuff networks up .


Correspondent Belgium's X Files An Olenka Frenkiel investigation Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/user/ULTJECRUMPIE#p/u/7/KJwbRpcN2ys

Correspondent Belgium's X Files An Olenka Frenkiel investigation Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/user/ULTJECRUMPIE#p/u/6/4E_6nWn3lwM

Correspondent Belgium's X Files An Olenka Frenkiel investigation Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/user/ULTJECRUMPIE#p/u/5/zEOMC-6RuQ4