Ms Dardenne, who now works in a factory, is anxious to show Dutroux that she has rebuilt her life. But she is waiting, she says, for justice to be done: "He must pay." Describing how she was kidnapped while cycling to school, she said she was forced to swallow Rohypnol, a sedative, and was then smuggled into Dutroux's house in an iron box. This was the thrust of revelations by a woman called Regina Louf, who told police of child sex parties involving judges, politicians, bankers and members of the royal family. But her stories of sadism, bestiality and murder have been widely dismissed as deranged fantasy. This is a case that has interested me for over a year now, ever since I watched a documentary on it so when I discovered this was a memoir, I went to my library the next day and read the entirety of it the next day.

The following day the brutally abused bodies of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were found in the garden at Sars-la-Buissière. Dutroux victim confronts rapist". the Guardian. Associated Press. 20 April 2004 . Retrieved 8 March 2022. On August 9, 1996 Dutroux and Lelievre kidnapped Laetitia Delhez as she walked home from a public swimming pool. One of the victims of the notorious Belgian suspected paedophile Marc Dutroux has for the first time told the horrific story of her kidnapping ordeal. Despite the insistence of the victims' parents and of Dutroux's lawyers that Dutroux was acting as part of a larger pedophilia ring, the trial has yet to offer up any hard proof. To date there is no evidence that Nihoul was part of the kidnappings, although many believe he represents the link between Dutroux and the alleged child pornography ring.However, in an interview given to several Belgian periodicals, Ms Dardenne appeared to pour cold water on the idea that her tormentor was part of a sinister paedophile network. She said she only ever saw Dutroux, and that he was the only one to abuse her. Dutroux's youngest victims were only eight. Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune were abducted in June 1995. They drew on the dank walls as they starved to death in cages in a hidden dungeon under his home at Marcinelle, near Charleroi, while he was serving a prison sentence for theft. I read my exercise books which remained in my satchel, and I wrote to my parents describing my days." Her memory, she says, is crystal clear, and is aided by the fact that she kept a detailed diary of her experience.

It's hard, really it's hard," she says, "though it's getting slowly better now. But I still get stared at in the train every morning on the way to work. I get asked for my autograph. I get long, long letters from women who say they don't understand how I can act like I do, how selfish I must be at heart, how I'm not sharing enough. Or from other rape victims who say that they sympathise, they can understand. It just makes me furious. There is nothing to understand. It happened and that's the end of it." Dutroux's mumbled reply was that he had "grown attached to her". She could, she recalls, barely contain her laughter. She can barely contain it now. "He was just so pathetic," she says. "I thought he would try to manipulate me again, like he did in the dungeon, but he wasn't even capable of that. He was tiny. He was abject. He couldn't tell the truth, not even once in his life. He didn't frighten me in the least. He made me laugh." The younger girl couldn’t believe it because Dutroux had told her that her family had abandoned her after refusing to pay him a ransom.More than seven years after his arrest, Dutroux went to trial in 2004, with his wife and Lelievre tried as accomplices. The fourth defendant, Michael Nihoul, a 62-year old alleged conman and well-known figure at a Brussels sex club, is expected to loom large in this context. Nihoul denies supplying ecstasy pills to Dutroux and Lelievre in exchange for Laetitia Delhez. He went on to a government mental health pension and was prescribed sedatives, which he reportedly began to hoard.

Psychologists say this story touches on the darkest and most primal of all human fears, concerning as it does the drugging, sexual violation and killing of children concealed in dark cellars. https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/the-schedule-of-horrors-in-the-dungeon-that-dutroux-built-26208780.html Dutroux was sentenced to 13 years in prison for child rape in 1989, but was released after three years for good behaviour. He has been held since 1996 on charges of kidnapping and raping six children and young women, including Ms Dardenne, in the mid-1990s; and of murdering four of them. He has yet to stand trial on these charges. Dardenne's ordeal in the basement of Dutroux's house lasted 80 days, and Delhez spent six days in the basement before both were rescued by authorities. [7] Earlier victims included eight-year-olds Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, both of whom died of starvation while Dutroux was in prison for car theft, [5] and seventeen-year-old An Marchal and nineteen-year-old Eefje Lambrechts, both of whom were buried alive [8] under a shed on Dutroux's property. A fifth body, that of his French accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, was found. Dutroux admitted to having drugged Weinstein and burying him alive. [5] Trial [ edit ]These girls were still alive when police first searched Dutroux's house. Officers heard what they described as the cries of children, but these were dismissed as coming from outside the house and not investigated. Supp, Barbara (11 November 2004). "Surviving Marc Dutroux". Der Spiegel. Archived from the original on 29 January 2012. It doesn't feel good to rate this book, therefore I won't. But I do like to offer my nuanced thoughts on this novel. Apparently, I was going to get myself killed or be caught by someone else. Someone more senior - the boss - who wanted to hurt me and wanted money from my parents. But apparently they did not have enough or did not want to pay," she said. Because the dungeon already had two little girls inside, the teenagers were held upstairs and chained to a bed and raped.