I Choose To Live

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She insisted on returning to the dungeon-like cellar in the Dutroux home in Marcinelle along with Sabine and court officials in April to help her "come to terms" with what had happened there.

In October 1996, the examining magistrate, Jean-Marc Connerotte, was dismissed from the case after he attended a fundraising event for the victims' families. Connerotte had been viewed as a national hero after he arrested Dutroux and liberated his final two victims and his dismissal aroused enormous public anger. I have one thing to ask of Marc Dutroux, even though I know I think I know the answer. “Why didn’t he just liquidate me, since he was always complaining about my pig-headed stubbornness?” she said, alluding to the fate of four other girls found dead on his property. It has never been fully explained why Belgian police didn’t go straight to Dutroux and arrest him when little girls across the country began to go missing. If I gave Monsieur pleasure, he allowed me to watch television for one, two, or three hours,” she later told Dutroux’s trial. In 2004, eight years after her kidnapping, Sabine Dardenne testified at the trial of Marc Dutroux, who was condemned to prison for life. And she decided to write a book:The first investigating magistrate was dismissed after having supper with one of the victim's families. Several prosecutors, police officers and witnesses have committed suicide. Evidence has gone astray. This memoir was made ten times better by her attitude, the way she looks at what happened and the way she has lived since, and I loved that she kept out the rape details. I felt like this was a true memoir, this was her account of what happened the way SHE wanted to tell it. She did not turn this into a story that people with obsess over and read for the juicy details. Boring in general. She states her reason for not giving details is "because she doesn't want to go through it again", then why write the book at all? We know nothing of why or how long this married couple engaged in this type of behavior. What they did for a living, how they dealt with having kids and family life while still kidnapping and murdering other childeren. We're never told how many people were involved in this circle of moldesters or where and what happened to the material they would distribute. The very end of the book briefly talks about the trial but once again no real details ever given. Dardenne and Delhez (photo) were 12 and 14 years old respectively in the summer of 1996 when they were abducted. Dardenne was in captivity for 80 days, while Delhez was held for eight days before being freed by police.

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. Two other victims, Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, allegedly starved to death in Dutroux's basement while he was in jail for car theft.

Enfance brisée

The following day the brutally abused bodies of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were found in the garden at Sars-la-Buissière. On June 24, 1995, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, both 8, were kidnapped together off a street near their home in Liege, 85km east of Dutroux’s Marcinelle home. This was a difficult book to read, and I hope that Ms Dardenne achieves her objectives in writing it. One of those objectives is to reclaim her life, while another was that the judicial system will never again release a predatory paedophile like Marc Dutroux on the basis of ‘good behaviour’. I’d like to think that both objectives can be realised. It took courage to write this book, and it is a harrowing and uncomfortable read. But it is nowhere near as uncomfortable to read about Ms Dardenne’s experiences as it was for her to endure them, and her account serves as a timeless reminder of other lives lost or blighted at the hands of paedophiles.