| Regina Louf (X1) |
Born in 1969. Sent to her grandmother, the wealthy Cecile Beernaert, in Knokke when 1,5 to 2 years old. The grandmother owned a hotel-villa., where children, including X1, were abused by a number of well known men. The grandmother was said to have been a collaborator during WWII by running two brothels, one for Nazi officers and one for regular Nazi soldiers. She was briefly detained by civilians from Knokke after the war, but soon released. As the story goes, she continued with a brothel at another location. Regina often had to satisfy her grandmother sexually. Everything that went wrong was blamed on Regina and her grandmother continually screamed at her: she was evil; she was a nobody; she was a whore; and because of that, her parents didn't want her and she deserved the treatment she got. Her face was regularly forced in her own urine; her fingers were immersed in boiling water (her grandmother compared this to pain she would feel in hell, where she was probably going to end up); she was beaten with whips; razors and glass were hidden in her schoolbag; and she was put under ice cold showers. Her grandmother learned her how to suck penises at the age of three. Regina received her first customers around this time, who in the first few years weren't allowed to penetrate her vagina; the anus was less of a problem, just as a number of tortures. When she refused to undress in front of an abuser at age 3, another girl was slashed with razors all over her body. The abusers then screamed at hear that this is all her fault. Her face was rubbed across the girl's bloody skin and she was forced to ask the girl for forgiveness. Regina lost her virginity to Tony, who would later be reintroduced to her as her pimp, at age 4 (in earlier interviews she would state that she was 12 years old, repressing the memories from her grandmother's house). He would participate in some the rapes (sometimes by dogs) and tortures in the following years, next to Paul Vanden Boeynants and others. Videos and pictures were made of these events. Her first daughter, Cheyenne, was born in February 1979 when she was 10 years old. 1998, Regina Louf, 'Zwijgen is voor daders - De getuigenis van X1', p. 133-134: "Grandmother was in the kitchen... I told her I was losing water. She said nothing, but looked at my legs and wiped her hands in her skirt. She felt with ice cold fingers in my panties and sent me to the bedroom... I crawled onto the bed, went to lie in the fetal position and sung silently to keep in control of my fears. About an hour later the first contractions started... I didn't even know how the baby would emerge out of my body, or through where. I felt so incredibly vulnerable and longed desperately to an adult. Then the men came. A baron, pépère, two brothers, a police officer. They watched, forced me on the bed and when a contraction started, pépère forced himself inside me. I was in a complete panic... I squeezed hard in the arms of the baron. He hit me in the face, once, twice, thrice." In PV 118.869 Regina gave the names: "When the contractions started her grandmother made a phone call. The Lippens brothers, Vanden Boeynants and the assistant commissioner of Knokke arrived. [Baron] 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. 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 (PV 118.872)." The factory in PV 118.872, December 18, 1996, is ASCO, the (former) arms company of the Boas family, who are close associates of Paul Vanden Boeynants. A lot of filming was done at this location. After having been tortured for 48 hours, and having been forced to kill a young child, Regina's daughter, whom she hadn't seen since it went missing six weeks after birth, was murdered. She was not allowed to lose consciousness while being tortured with a knife in her vagina, and when she briefly did at the moment the knife was taken out, her daughter was murdered in front of her eyes. Michel Nihoul, Annie Bouty, Tony, and two gendarme officers were among those present at this event. Tony, Nihoul, Jean-Paul Dumont, Michel Vander Elst, Wilfried Martens, Paul Vanden Boeynants, Melchior Wathelet and Baron de Bonvoisin all regularly went to the ASCO factory of Roger Boas, which X1 has referred to as "the factory of the video recordings". PV 116.253, November 30, 1996: "X1 recognizes two places where sacrifices of children have taken place during videotaped parties. ASCO factory. Axory Parcels firm. Sterrebeekstraat in Zaventem." In June 1979, Regina was allowed back to her parents in Gent. The reason was that Regina had told a friend, who usually walked home with her until they reached the grandmother's villa, about the abuse. The parents of this girl then invited Regina to a birthday party where she retold her story. The result was that the girl's parents, knowing Regina could never know all these details without having experienced them, informed the principal, a nun, of her school. Regina went to the directress and showed the bruises in her neck. The nun told Regina that she was "a fantasizer" and called up her grandmother. According to Regina, during the phone call the nun looked at her with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, and ended the conversation by saying "I feel sorry for you, such a granddaughter... that must not be easy." When Regina came back from school she was suspended on a hook at her grandmother's attic and tortured by her abusers for hours, mainly by raping her with razors. Her best friend at the time, Anke (the same Anke that, according to Regina, also testified in 1996/1997?), was severely tortured in front of Regina, for which she herself was blamed by the perpetrators. Without informing any of the teachers or classmates, Regina was taken from school a month before the ending of the year, and sent to her parents in Gent. The parents of her classmate thought that she had been taken away from her grandmother by child care. Only in 1996, the parents found out this had not been the case (were never interviewed as witnesses to Regina's story). Regina's grandmother at the time was furious over her "bad behaviour" and did not want to let her go. However, at the time the grandmother seemed to have no choice as rumors started to spread. Over the next several months Regina was able to recover a bit from the traumas sustained at her grandmother's, even though her parents totally ignored and neglected her. Both parents hated each other and seldom communicated with each other or with Regina. The rest of the family was also very nasty to Regina. They "felt sorry" for her mother that she had to put up with such a daughter. Some members of the family knew about the abuse; others didn't and seemed to be just regular low life. Regina thought that her mother became the way she was, because her grandmother neglected and abused her the same way. At age 12, Regina was reintroduced by her mother to Antoine "Tony" Vandenbogaert and was told: "From now on Tony is your owner". She identified him as one of her torturers at her grandmother's house, but pretended not to know him. One of the rules she had been learned was never to recognize customers anywhere. Clients always had to make the first move. Tony initially overwhelmed her with attention, but quickly demanded sex in return (her father also used to buy her presents in return for sex). He began a psychological game with her, which was more sophisticated but not less brutal than her grandmother's. He brought her to parties at which extreme sadism was practiced: "I knew some of them by name and some of them I did see on tv at times." There was a lot of competition between the girls as they all tried to avoid as much pain as possible. The one who performed the worst usually received most of the torture. The girls also tried to correct each other, because whenever a girl did not cooperate, made mistakes or began to cry, the others would be held responsible for that and receive an additional torture session. Introduced to Clo (assumed to have been Carine Dellaert) in late 1981, who was to become her "sister". Tony figured people would be asking less questions if he was seen with two young girls instead of one. Clo became one of the few good friends of Regina, but was brutally murdered in the first half of 1983, after she had been raped and tortured while trying to deliver a baby. Some time before Clo's death, Regina learned that Clo was an "angel" (meaning she would die) and had ended up in the end-circuit. The only reason Clo was kept alive for several more months was because she was pregnant, and many customers liked pregnant girls. In 1982, Regina tried to tell one of her teachers that she was abused and that her parents apparently didn't care. The teacher went to talk with the parents and became convinced that Regina was lying. Tony told Regina that clients paid him 10,000 to 15,000 franks [about 250 to 375 euros] to spend 30 minutes with her, 50,000 franks [about 1250 euros] for a day or a night, and 120,000 franks [about 3000 euros] for a whole weekend. Underage girls were often exchanged to seal certain illegal deals. The pimps would take pictures during these events. Regina became one of the girls that Nihoul would take with him to business meetings, receptions, and diners so she could hang around persons he pointed out. These persons were child abusers and this way Nihoul reminded them that there was no way out. Tony was also involved in blackmailing people. Regina was regularly taken to a villa in Brussels in which a number of cameras had been carefully hidden. The girls were shown where these cameras were located, the reason being that they had to position their (prominent) customers in such a way that their faces would be in full view during the abuse. At least back in the seventies, it was not possible to rotate the camera, or zoom in with it, as the mechanism would be heard then. Regina and the other girls were ordered to provoke violent behaviour in their customers. Brief conversations were also encouraged, in which either the customer would acknowledge he was having sex with an under aged girl or in which the girl herself would mention her age. 1998, Regina Louf, 'Zwijgen is voor daders - De getuigenis van X1', p. 99-103: "Since I was 8 or 9 years old, Mitch [Nihoul] would often enough take me with him and give me the assignment to hang around a certain customer. I liked doing that. I enjoyed seeing them shamble around, their efforts to stay out of my way unnoticed. I smiled when Mich asked me to stand next to a customer to make a picture, and how the customer reluctantly smiled and put a weak arm around my shoulder... The glances which were then exchanged between the one taking the picture and the customer were priceless. The customer knew he was trapped... In the night they had been the boss, now they were prey... Too bad that most of them, once they knew they had been trapped, went to experiment even more during the night... In Brussels there was a villa in which a room was set up with built-in cameras. Even in the 1970s these cameras were so discrete that only the people who maintained them and the child-hookers knew where they were located... Why did I had to get those guys clearly in the picture, why was I supposed to get them to hit me and brutally rape me? Why was 'regular' sex often not enough?... Blackmail, the word that was never mentioned, I only started to really understand when I was thirteen, fourteen years old... The deals that were struck between the perpetrators were negotiated before I went to bed with them, while I was sitting with them at the diner table - like the carrot in front of the mule to make him go faster - or after the sex. As appetizer or dessert, it made no difference to me, for them it was a way to keep each other to the deals made, unwritten contracts with enormous binding power. Because once you've had sex with a child, you are branded... unless all parties keep their mouths shut. Then nothing tastes sweeter than a child, one of the perpetrators once remarked. Contracts between the business milieu and the political world, contracts between businessmen amongst each other, fraud with subsidies or licenses, setting up fake firms, criminal contracts like arms trade... everything was possible. And it always ended with sex and children... Pictures were taken, in jest, to keep both parties to their contracts... The men were brought to ideas by child pornography movies that were played at parties... The pimps also had another tactic. They invited a person who could be useful to them. They went to dine with him, and took him - after he had been liquored up - to a 'party'. Men from the top layer of society are used to visiting or getting offered prostitutes. They usually knew that something like this would follow, and the prostitutes they would see upon entering would be slightly older girls, between 16 [sexually mature in Belgium] and 18 years old. More booze and cocaine would be supplied, for ambience. And only then the 'prey' would be taken to a room where a younger girl was waiting, like me, then. I had the assignment to get him into bed with me and if I didn't succeed in that sanctions would follow. The bed scene was secretly filmed and served for blackmail purposes. Most men probably realized only afterwards in what kind of hornet's nest they now found themselves, but by then it was far too late... Men were introduced to the network by colleagues, friends or family members. Carefully or slowly, or briskly after a party. Step by step customers, who first went to bed with me cautiously, were stimulated to rougher sex. I was forced to help them with that... They became complicit and at the same time their mutual connections became tighter. Not one of these people was still inclined to sign contracts with individuals outside the network. If that happened one could make them pay dearly for that... I always pretended to like their advances, I fought back if they wanted to, I played their games. Then I stayed important and didn't end in the end circuit. Because hidden to the outside world children were dying at the orders of customers who were willing to pay the money. The child-prostitutes all knew it, and the longer you revolved in the circuit, the bigger the threat." Regina's son Elijah was born in August 1982. Again she was raped by several men just before giving childbirth. The baby was taken away right after childbirth. When Regina asked what happened to her baby, Tony sneered at her: "Ungrateful bitch, be happy that he wasn't killed in front of your eyes. Sleep and never think about it again, ever, you hear me!" Her son Tiu was born on September 3, 1983 in the presence of her grandmother, her mother, her father, Tony, and Serge Donners (connected to a production company), and later murdered, apparently to punish Regina for having advised Christine to talk with her parents about the network she had ended up in. Christine Van Hees was 15 or 16 years old when she fell in love with Michel Nihoul. He bought her a number of presents and was very nice to her. After a while Nihoul convinced her, through his psychological games ("you are not a child anymore"; "I gave you so much"; "I'm a grown man and I have certain needs"), to have sex with with Regina and later with him. After a while "Chrissie" found out about the real Nihoul, not the least through a ritual abuse ceremony in which the stomach of a white bunny was slashed open. During the abuse at this event a snuff movie was played in which a two year old girl was raped, tortured and murdered. Christine was murdered in February 1983, soon after the murder on Regina's child. Mieke was murdered in November 1984 in the villa of her grandmother by the same people that killed Christine. Secretly gave birth to her son Nanook on June 16, 1984. Regina killed him shortly afterwards by pressing him against her chest after she heard Tony's car approaching. Tony praised her as boys were far less valuable to him than girls. Around this time, in the summer of 1984, Regina had become very depressed and apathetic. However, when Tony told her, "when you are 16 you can come live with me" she became convinced he had made plans to have her killed, and began looking for a way to escape. Luckily, she met Erwin, her future husband, in October 1984, and fell in love with him right away. When things became more serious, Tony told her to dump him and never speak to him again, which she ultimately refused. Just by being present in her life, Erwin dramatically screwed up business as usual between Tony and Regina, although the abuse certainly did not stop. Erwin followed Regina in 1986 to the new school she picked, just to be able to protect her. Married Erwin on June 29, 1988, one day before graduation, and moved out. Within a month of living together, Regina began to relive the abuse in her mind and had continuous nightmares. Went to look for professional help and was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder. A continuous process of trying to reintegrate her mind had begun, and locally she became very active in the child abuse support circuit where she made a number of new friends. Regina's relationship to Tony and the network from 1988 to the 1996 Dutroux affair is not very clear, largely because De Baets and his team were kicked off her case around the time when she began to speak more openly about this period. Certainly in the early period, it appears that Tony kidnapped and raped her on more than one occasion, inquiring through Regina's mother if her husband, who had become a trucker and often was away from the house for days, was home. At some point when talking to De Baets (after the 1996 Dutroux arrest), Regina pointed out the picture of Katrien de Cuyper, whom she had (briefly) known by that name. The 15 year old Katrien de Cuyper disappeared in the evening of December 17, 1991 in Antwerp and was found dead on June 22, 1992. The autopsy that followed showed she had been murdered quite soon after the kidnapping. According to Regina, Katrien's murder happened somewhere in the last half of 1990 to late 1991/early 1992, after Tony and an associate had come to visit her. Tony's partner in crime stayed with her kid(s) (Eli was born on July 3, 1990. Yentl born on July 18, 1991. Janek and Hannah after that. Regina thought she already had Eli, but wasn't sure about Yentl) and Regina was told to cooperate or her children, and possibly her husband, would be murdered. Regina was taken to Castle Kattenhof, near Antwerp (found out by investigators after descriptions given by Regina). Here she was forced to kill a "Katrien". Tony, Nihoul, Bouty, Michel Vander Elst, Joost Bert, Leopold Lippens, the apparent owner of the castle, and someone close to Vanden Boeynants were all present. The purpose of this temporary kidnapping was to ensure her silence about the network. When Regina saw Katrien, she thought Tony had started over again with other girls. In the last couple of hearings of Regina by De Baets, she began to describe how she had been taken 15 to 20 times to Castle Kattenhof between 1990 and 1995. Besides Katrien, she had seen 6 to 7 murders on children: a Turkish girl of 9, a girl of maybe 11 or 12 years, a short-haired boy of 7 or 8 years, a blond girl of 15 or 16 years old, a North-African boy of 3 or 4 years, and two girls of 10 - one named Veronique. Even though she was forced, Regina had the idea that she had become "one of them". At some point De Baets asked if the Turkish girl might have been Loubna Benaissa, to which Regina answered "could be", meaning that she just didn't know. Four days later Loubna was found at the home of a pedophile and newspapers would later spin the story by saying Regina told De Baets she had seen Loubna die (and forget to mention other very important facts about the case). A gendarme officer said to the team of De Baets that Regina had already tried to inform him about the abuse network in 1989. Nothing was done with this information. Another attempt was made in 1994. 1998, 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 186: "We did agree that Connerotte and Bourlet were white ravens within the system. How long had Tania and I not tried to work with the gendarmerie? We stimulated victims of sexual abuse, like rape victims, to testify against their perpetrators. Tania had given a hint about my perpetrators to the gendarmerie. In 1994 I had given her my permission - after Tony had threatened me in my new house when Erwin was out working - to tell the BOB in Gent about locations and persons in the region of Gent where children were still abused. I didn't dare to go myself, out of fear of my pimp, but Tania invited the BOB officers and passed everything through. The gendarme officers weren't even willing to produce an official report, even though they informed her that they knew these locations and persons and knew something was wrong there. But, they said, they didn't want to burn their fingers on that. Patsy Sorensen of Payoke [former socialist politician who runs a center for victims of prostitution and human trafficking] had the same experience as we: nobody wanted to listen." In 1994, Regina indirectly contacted the gendarmerie/police after Tony had threatened her at her new home. The two inspectors that went to visit her at her home told they know something was going on, but were not willing to burn their fingers. That was the end of it. After Dutroux and Nihoul were arrested in August 1996, Regina's friend Tania convinced her to testify. Her primary interviewers, Patriek De Baets and his team, and supported by Connerotte and Bourlet, trusted her and were very successful in substantiating many of her claims. As with most of the X-witnesses, not to a number of other abuse victim-witnesses that came forward or were approached, the hearings were difficult and took a lot of time, simply because all the victims were extremely traumatized. The interviews basically were (quite effective) therapy for them. Regina gave a description of how the interviews went (1998, 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 206-208): "It is so hard for me to share my Dissociative disorder with other people. I'm an expert in hiding my handicaps, and now of all people I have to explain to BOB-ers that I live with different alters in me. I expect that they will declare me absolutely nuts. Still, this doesn't happen. Being taken serious by these people is new for me. I understand all to well that it is not easy to work with me. I am bashful, frugal with information, laugh my fears away, evade the pain that comes up as soon as I have to talk about the abuse by introducing long silences, or simply do not answer... Nobody can know how immensely difficult it is to break with my carefully imposed code of silence and still to testify." Regina's mind had been shattered in numerous alters, among them Kenny, a young alter who dealt with some of the worst torture; Stone, one of the toughest who answered to Tony and controlled her fears; Hoer (Whore), who could best satisfy Tony and the other abusers; Moon, born to deal with extreme cold; Meisje (Girl), the innocent, sensitive kid. 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 206-207: "... 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." Regina gave the first names of about 35 children in the network that she had witnessed being murdered or whom she suspected had been murdered (those who disappeared suddenly for a variety of reasons). She forgot the names of another thirty or so children. The murders she described mainly happened in the 1976-1988 period. 1998, 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 218-219: "February - March - April '97... I have now been through a whole period in which the alters were manifesting more prominently, and I know my own selves now very well. The little ones, as I call my younger, hurt alters, have largely gotten the chance to tell their story, without heaven falling on their heads. It sounds strange, but the younger alters still believe that very bad things will happen when they break their code of silence. As for the older alters, the tough ones, the grown ups, it becomes clear that talking only liberates us. The big secret doesn't weigh as much anymore. It is enriching to share all these horrible facts that have happened to us with the investigators. Even if not one perpetrator is arrested, the experience this team gained in working with victims of heavily traumatizing facts is worth gold." In September 1996, Regina handed a whole pile of papers written by her since 1989. In these papers she already detailed how Tony hired her to other men who tortured and abused her, sometimes while making movies. Some papers were written after she recognized one of her abusers on tv. These papers were dated by the BOB and concluded they had indeed been written long before the Dutroux affair. Already in November 1996, Regina noticed that pressure had begun to built on De Baets and team by "sceptical" colleagues. To appease this group De Baets allowed some of the officers in the videoroom and made sure to keep the camera running during breaks. This way he tried to make sure that nobody could accuse him, or his colleagues, of manipulating the witness during breaks. This effort failed, as in December the newly-appointed coordinator of the whole Dutroux and X-investigation, gendarmerie commandant Jean-Luc Duterme, began to "re-read" (read: manipulate) the existing statements of X1. In early 1997, Duterme scrapped all of the 43 addresses where De Baets and (originally) Connerotte wanted to conduct searches. Instead, on March 20, 1997, after a bogus search at the Abrasax cult, Duterme allowed only one address to be searched: the home of Regina, turning her from witness to suspect. On July 10, Van Espen, Langlois, Duterme and three other "re-readers" of the X1 testimonies secretly came together and decided to "temporarily" relieve De Baets and his team from the X-Dossier investigation. This became final in August, when De Baets and team were officially charged with manipulating X1 (charges from which they were totally acquitted in June 2000). De Baets and his team were replaced with very abusive interrogators who made it clear from the beginning that they were convinced Regina was making everything up. The first thing they did was to organize an informal talk outside of the bureau and without any notes or video being taken. They indirectly told Regina that they weren't interested in the truth: "We just want our paycheck at the end of the month." They insinuated that she must also have had some fun with Tony, because "weren't you in love with him?" They told her that her experiences of rape and torture couldn't have been so bad, because she's having a family now, a nice house, kids, and is laughing again. They stopped doing any field work to investigate her claims. Regina somehow has to revisit all these places herself and subpoena her suspects, so she can provide some "evidence". They then began questioning her friend Tania who had nothing to do with the case besides having made the initial call to Connerotte and De Baets. When she is asked to come to the bureau it turns out she is interrogated in a readily accessible room with X1's supposedly well-protected files strewn all over the place. The investigators insinuate that she must have known De Baets a lot longer, that she probably was involved in the same network as Regina, and that she was a prostitute. Tania felt very much intimidated at the end of the conversation. Like most others, the newspaper 'Nieuwsblad' on February 5, 2004, summarized this event as: "Also, she [Regina] has always refused to be interrogated by the new investigating team." In November 1997, journalists Annemie Bulté and Douglas De Coninck wrote a letter to Regina, and explained that her dossiers were now available to anyone with the right connections, that they were worried about the turn the investigation had taken, and that they were working on a publication in De Morgen (newspaper). Regina got along very well with them. In December 1997, Regina wrote a letter to Marc Verwilghen, chairman of the Dutroux commission, who wrote back that he supported De Baets and that his research was solid. On January 6, 1998, the first article about X1 appeared in De Morgen, soon creating a firestorm in the media. According to Regina, the authors had not twisted one word she had spoken. The average reader (at least initially) supported the article and Regina. That afternoon, a VTM team knocked on the door unannounced which irritated her. Many other TV programs and newspapers began calling in that day. Regina's mother also called her up, until then not knowing she was X1. When Regina explained to her why she wanted Tony punished, all her mother could say was "What did he do then, Regine? We have to talk." The next Saturday, after a large interview with her had appeared in De Morgen, Regina called her mother to say goodbye one last time. Her mother promised to leave her alone, but within 15 minutes her father was at her doorstep, screaming: "Ah Regine, you wanted it yourself. You couldn't wait to fall in love with Tony. You couldn't be stopped, goddamned!... If anything happens to your mother - and you better remember this - then I will hold you accountable, you hear me! I have the means! I will break you!" Luckily for Regina, besides her husband, her parents-in-law were also present, which finally convinced them after all these years that she had been telling the truth. Even though their son had known all about Tony and her parents, all they had seen until then were friendly parents who spoiled their daughter (which were bribes and reminders of how "thankful" her DID traumatized daughter should be to them). On TV, her parents denied knowing anything about the abuse, claimed that her daughter was crazy and that she should be put in a mental institution. The next Thursday, Regina was allowed to speak her mind at the well known Panorama TV show. As with all interviews, she refused to give names in order to "avoid sensationalism". After this interview and facing the cameras (for which she was deathly afraid) she felt more relieved than ever before. Soon thereafter, her therapist also noticed a remarkable improvement and said it would not be long anymore before her mind would be an integrated whole again. She would still regularly have a difficult time dealing with the memories, but this should become less over time. In the days, weeks and months thereafter, Regina and her testimonies were ridiculed by virtually the entire media. The program 'Au nom de la loi' clearly was fed information by someone close to the investigation. It capitalized on every mistake X1 had made during the interviews and left out everything that would have substantiated her story. It was the same story with Knack, like Au nom de la loi famous for their support of de Bonvoisin and Vanden Boeynants. La Derniere Heure, De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad, almost every newspaper and magazine began to attack her. 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 257: "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 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." Interestingly, a number of the British newspapers, who normally do not touch important stories in their own country, were quite supportive of X1. Even though Regina was ridiculed by almost the entire media, it did lead to several interrogations of Tony and her parents. On January 28, 1998, under the supervision of substitute magistrate Nicole De Rouck and prosecutor Jean Soenen at the BOB in Gent, Regina was confronted with her father against her will. Before her father was allowed in, De Rouck had an interesting conversation with Regina, which was caught on tape. While Regina was severely distressed by her parents' statements on TV, De Rouck began to tell her how her parents still loved her and cared about her. This went on for quite some time, and because De Rouck also forgot to mention that the camera was running (and a number of other things), some investigators think that De Rouck tried to get Regina to a point where she would withdraw her charges. Again, this didn't happen and her father, who would deny everything, was eventually allowed in. De Rouck would later state publicly that nothing Regina said checked out and that she herself pursued the relationship with Tony (an interesting contradiction all by itself). Tony was interrogated by the BOB in Gent for the first time on February 3, 1998. He denied having known Nihoul, the other people X1 talked about, or even that he had sex with her. On March 12, Tony was confronted by three women who confirmed parts of X1's story. Tony denied having known the women. On April 23, 1998, Tony was again summoned to the BOB in Gent to testify for a third time, followed by a confrontation with Regina. Gendarme officers were joking with Tony and apologizing that he had to come all the way from Antwerp to testify about what they saw as a ridiculous affair. 'Zwijgen is voor Daders,' p. 272: "On April 23, the day of Dutroux's just as spectacular as ridiculous escape, I am confronted with Tony at the BOB in Gent. Hours I'm waiting in a stuffy little bureau, with a Gendarme officer to guard me until I, almost broken from anxiety, without any preparation am pushed into a room where my pimp is already chatting comfortably with a Gendarme officer behind the desk... I know from the BOB officer who brought me to the bureau that he [Tony] already had made certain confessions... There are no cameras. Just at this crucial moment they think video is not necessary... No psychological assistance. With five men in one room. My anger dissolves and make way for panic, a claustrophobic feeling and fear. I want to get away, I'm afraid. There is no break, neither a moment to recover from the shock to see him again. The Gendarme officer from Gent explains what I told about the abuse that Tony put me through. My pimp is right there!... I fight to stay upright, to not shout out that I will withdraw everything if they just let me go... He coldly admits that he abused me since I was twelve years old - he first tried to say it was at 14, but after a remark from me he admitted I was twelve when it started - in all sorts of ways, multiple times a week, with the knowledge of my parents. He admits, with a faint smile on his face, that he had a key of my parents' house. Faltering, with my head down, I tell how he lent me out for the first time during parties in Gent. He nodded and raised his shoulders. He names the man, who I can only describe, by name. He confesses how he forced my friends into playing sex games... Only a severely shortened version is typed out. I watch it in despair. Why aren't they filming? Why does he get the chance to adapt his version, after they have asked him the same question a second time, because they hadn't typed the answer? These are professionals?... I ask for a break, I want to get away from this stuffy room, but it is refused. So I use the same trick from my childhood: I have to go to the bathroom. Danny, the Brussels BOB, follows me closely. Apparently, I'm better guarded that day than Dutroux... Halfway down the hall I crawl against the wall. I start to cry, throw my hands in front of my face, and it hurts so much!... I went to sit down with my head bent down. I know that I should attack him, tell him what he had done to me, repeat what I had said during the interviews. I can't do it. I might be able to do it, if my therapist was present, or another person I could trust, but I can't do it when surrounded by people I don't trust and who are looking at me with scorn... [After the interrogation] the BOB officer from Gent gives me pat on the shoulders and tells me I should be happy. Happy? I look at him with flaming eyes. Happy to hear that he confesses without remorse, that he is able to go free, that he can make other victims again? Happy with this consolation prize? Man, get lost. That same day, before Tony confessed he was my pimp - with the comfort of a man who knows he's never going to be punished - the magistrates had decided to begin closing the X-Dossiers, including that of X1." Only the newspaper De Morgen prominently reported about Tony's confession. 1999, 'De X-dossiers', Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, Annemie Bulté, and Douglas De Coninck, p. 503-504: "Anja D. is also interviewed. She has been pointed out by a number of former classmates as the best friend that Regina had in the years 1984 and 1985... [PV 103.387, September 25, 1997, BOB Gent:] 'You show me a picture which I recognize as showing Tony, being the older man with whom X1 had a sexual relationship... I only got knowledge of this relationship during the fact that I often went to the house of X1. I went to sleep at least one weekend per month at X1's... It sometimes happened that Tony went up with X1 to the room of the mother of X1. There they had sexual intercourse. Tony could arrive at any moment. It so happened that Tony could arrive very late in the evening. I myself determined that there was sexual intercourse between X1 and Tony. It is so that the room of X1 was right next to the room of the mother. It happened that I was still sleeping when Tony had sex with X1 at that moment in the next room... I went past the room, and the door was open. Then I conclusively saw the sexual intercourse between X1 and Tony. By the way, at one time Tony asked me if I didn't want to join them. I declined.... Pertaining to the reaction of the parents of X1, it is true that both knew about the relationship. The father absolutely was aware of the relationship, but wrapped himself in silence... It sometimes happened that Tony was gone with X1 the whole afternoon, sometimes also a short while. X1 never told me where they had been... In my opinion the relationship between this man and X1 had already been going on for quite some time... I think she absent more than the average pupil, but it couldn't be called 'a lot'." 1999, 'De X-dossiers', p. 503: "The first childhood friend of Regina Louf who is interviewed in the summer of 1997 is Kristelle M. [PV 103.011, September 1, 1997, BOB Gent, officer Jan Vincent]. She was in the same class in the years 1983-84 and 1984-85... '[Regina] sometimes disappeared from school in the afternoon', Kristelle remembered. If it is true what this woman says, then the re-readers of the dossier Van Hees can fold a boat from the absence register that they saw as 'proof' that Regina Louf impossibly could have been in Brussels in the early evening of February 13, 1984. What Kristelle M. remembered above all, is that she continually talked about sex. She told how she had a relationship with 'an older man'. According to M., the whole class assumed that she was lying. Not Kristelle M. She had seen with her own eyes how this 'older man' picked up Regina after school. And there was something else: Regina at some point told her that she was pregnant of that older man. Kristelle M. also knew that Regina often spoke about a 'female friend with whom she could amuse herself and with whom she often went out in the Boudewijnstraat'. She didn't remember the name of the friend anymore, 'but it could have been Christine, Carine, Caroline or Claudine'. Kristelle M. could also tell that Regina, as a kid of 14, drank alcohol and one morning arrived in class and 'smelled of liquor'. One time she arrived at school with a clearly visible bruise..." The day after the confrontation with Tony, Regina was confronted with Emile Dellaert, the father of Clo (Carine). Regina was there when Clo was murdered and knew how her father had sold her to the network. At the time of Clo's disappearance, Emile had already been suspected by the police and his ex-wife for a whole number reasons. For example, they were asking themselves why he waited a week to contact the police, why he claimed that Clo had ran away even though she hadn't taken anything with her, why he made "sensual" photos of his daughter, why Clo was often heard screaming in the weeks before her disappearance, why she had become so extremely afraid of the woods all of a sudden (she was a member of the scouts), or why witnesses at the scouting club claimed that father and daughter were acting more like a couple in love. It's also interesting to note 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. But to the investigators of the X1 case that seemingly all didn't matter. Regina refused to cooperate anymore, which was seen as the evidence that she had never known Carine Dellaert. 1999, Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, Annemie Bulté, and Douglas De Coninck, 'De X-dossiers', p. 501-502: "Let's call her Fanny V. It took us two phone calls to find her. Few have known Carine Dellaert as well as she did. They were classmates in the school years 1977-78 and 1978-79 in the town school Gezusters Loveling in the Van Hulthemstraat in Gent. 'We became friends in sixth grade', Fanny says. 'I was eleven or twelve then, Carine thirteen, I believe. What I can tell you, dates from that period.' Fanny has to chuckle when she hears about the conclusions of the District Attorney's office in Gent. In the official reports it is reported that her friend was a hardworking pupil which never had any troubles at home. 'In any case she was a year older than the rest of the class', Fanny says. 'She already had failed one of the lower classes. I looked up to her a lot. I was still a child, she a real woman. She was physically and mentally so much stronger than we. When my mother heard that she had become my best friend, she went to complain about that with the school's management. Because I had said to my mother that Carine regularly had sex with her father and also with other men. 'No, Carine was not happy, not at all. On the playground we sometimes sat silently next to each other the whole time. I felt she was suffering immensely under the situation. She wanted to run away from home, she often spoke about that: "Run away, far away from here." 'She told me that she had to sleep with many men... As far as Fanny remembered, Carine Dellaert told her that this primarily happened at her home. I was still a child, didn't understand anything and didn't ask more questions. What I do remember is that her mother knew nothing about this. I used to ask that all the time: and how about your mother, what does she think? She's always gone, she said...' After the lower school, in 1979, Fanny V. lost contact with Carine Dellaert. 'I never saw her again.' She [Fanny] went to another school and got to know other people there. One of them - we are not making this up - was Regina Louf. 'Regina talked to almost no one', Fanny continues. 'If Regina and Carine knew each other? To me that seems perfectly possible. Regina also had her secret, she was very introvert. If Regina and Carine knew each other through such a circuit it would have been hard for me to find out. At school you only saw the facade. I thought that you could compare them, their attitudes. I have bought the book of Regina, but I'm afraid to read it. I have wanted to start a few times, but there are things in there... it hurts me too much.'" In late April 1998, substitute magistrate Nicole De Rouck, who had been involved in bringing together Regina and her father for an interrogation (intimidation), announced that Regina (indeed) had sex with Tony since she was 12 years old (something which the Justice Department would try to spin by claiming she was 14 years old when the "relationship" began), but that it happened too long ago for Tony to still be prosecuted. Then she stated that Regina herself had pursued the "relationship" with Tony and that only after the Dutroux affair she came to see it as abuse. Needless to say that several complaints were filed against De Rouck for publicly defending pedophilia. On April 28, De Rouck stated: "We have investigated the testimonies of X1 to the smallest and most absurd details and all of them have turned out to be incorrect". The investigation into X1 was officially closed on June 2, 1998. In May 1998, Regina met Mieke (not to be confused with the one murdered in November 1984), a girl from the same abuse network who knew the same perpetrators. They had last seen each other in 1979. Mieke had been terribly persecuted for demanding a correction of a TV program that attacked X1. By the time she met Regina she had lost everything, including her home and her daughter. The two women noticed how "somebody" was trying to shut Mieke up and keep her away from Regina. Regina reacted by taking Mieke in and making her part of the family. Mieke's spirits improved dramatically and together they began taken legal steps to get Mieke's daughter back (which was met with stiff opposition). Tiny Mast, the mother of Kim en Ken Heyrman, who disappeared in 1994, became a good friend of Regina. She had also been treated very badly by the investigators. May 2, 2002, BBC, 'Regina Louf's testimony': "Regina Louf was the first of 11 people to come forward to talk of their harrowing experiences at the hands of Belgium's paedophile networks. She told investigators how, from her earliest childhood, she'd been used in a paedophile ring. This had included her grandmother, her parents and a pimp - Tony. She now says "It was big business - blackmail - there was a lot of money involved." She knew, she said, that sessions were secretly filmed without the clients' knowledge... Senior judges, one of the country's most powerful politicians - now dead - and a very influential banker were included... One of the regular organisers of these parties, she said, was the man she knew as 'Mich', Jean Michel Nihoul. The sessions not only involved sex, they included sadism, torture and murder; and again, she described in detail, the place, the victims and how they were killed. She also claimed the young Marc Dutroux was there. "At these parties Nihoul was a sort of party beast while Dutroux was more on the side." Regina Louf's testimony was vitally important." On p. 278-279 of her biography, Regina mentioned about 50 persons in the gendarmerie, support groups, journalists and her personal surroundings who took her serious.
P.S.: Important note from Patriek De Baets about the alleged four babies of X1: "'About those four childbirths, followed by murders, I never believed that', says adjutant De Baets later. 'That she lost at least one child, to me that seems to be certain. What bothers her most, is that that child has faded from history. You noticed during interviews that she had a strong urge to give her lost child - or children - a place in her narrative. That was the most important to her. I did not see this as intentionally lying. It was clear that she had great trouble finding her way in her memories. We became angry about that at some point. She kept mixing up facts with each other of which you could see that they weren't right. And still we had to listen, I thought. We were only at the beginning. I estimated that we, if we could have proceeded, would only have had a clear picture of her past after a year or two. In between we had to verify. And that's what we did, how much we were accused afterwards for not having done that.' It could be a coincidence, but the first verifications of the testimony of X1 were direct hits." (1999, Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, Annemie Bulte and Douglas De Coninck, 'De X-Dossiers', p. 167)
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| Nathalie Waeterschoot |
X1 identified Nathalie W. (PV 150.521) as someone present at the sexclub Les Atrebates in the early 1980s while Nathalie W. correctly identified the pimp of X1 as "Anthony" and as a friend of Nihoul (PV 150.521); X1 identified the father of Nathalie W. (PV 150.521); X4 identified Nathalie W. (PV 150.521: "PV 150.521: "She [Nathalie W.] is recognized by X1 and X4... X4 states that [Nathalie] Waet. has the same age as her except for 3 months (correct)") while Nathalie W. identified the mother (Simone) and a sister of X4 by name (PV 150.521)
Also spelled "Waterschoot". Born on June 16, 1965. With support from her therapist she gave her first testimony to the police in February 1996, six months before the Dutroux affair. The officer who interviewed her at some point stated, "I can't write this down", which resulted in Nathalie walking out of his office without signing anything. In July 1996, after two police officers, Joël Gerard and Theo Vandyck, incidentally met with Nathalie's therapist, she was interviewed again. Nathalie began telling how she was first raped by her father, Andre (born March 7, 1937), when she was six. Her father, just as many others who raped her, was a member of the Rotary Club (of Waterloo in his case; when the investigators later approached the Rotary of Waterloo, its president refused to give them a membership list). Nathalie's father began sending her to family and friends of his, who regularly organized child abuse parties at their villas in the region of Waterloo. She told the interviewers that when she was 10 years old her father delivered her to Vincent, aka Prince Alexandre de Merode, in Spain. Vincent, who drove in a Jaguar (inspectors later identified the car as a Jaguar XJ6, model 1968. (PV 150.249)), then took her to parties at castles in central Belgium. She became pregnant three times and in all cases the baby was aborted. In early September 1996, Nathalie first spoke about the private sex club Les Atrebates in Etterbeek, which she said was a regular meeting place of her abusers. She'd seen a number of other girls there. One of the individuals involved she called "Mich", the name X1 reserved for Michel Nihoul (and also placed at Les Atrebates and the Dolo). 1999, 'the X-Dossiers', p. 310: "It was Joël who called me with the question if 'Mich' was Nihoul. Yes, I said. I had immediately recognized him on tv. I didn't see him as the most important person. He was there in the period of the Atrebatenstraat [Les Atrebates], when I was 15 or 16. That was all." Said that Nihoul raped her at least 3 times in the early 1980s. Didn't recognize X1 from pictures, but did recognize X1's mother and X1's pimp as "Anthony" (which is correct). She claimed Anthony was a friend of Nihoul, which has also been reported by X1. X1 and X4 recognized Nathalie W. as a victim of the network. X1 recognized the father of Nathalie. Nathalie W. identified the mother (Simone) and a sister of X4 by name (PV 150.521). Pointed out The Dolo and a number of villas and other locations where she said she had been abused. Reported having seen Paul Vanden Boeynants at the Dolo with some women. In the following weeks Nathalie began to complain about how she was threatened by anonymous phone calls and said that the network was following every step of the investigation. In mid-October 1996, Nathalie claimed to have been beaten up by a person she recognized as Jean-Louis Delamotte (picked from photos shown to her), a business associate of Michel Nihoul. Soon thereafter the investigators noticed a "V" that had been carved in her arm. According to her, it was a present from Vincent, who had stopped by to advise her to pull out of the investigation. Soon thereafter, Nathalie claimed that a green car tried to force her from the road. For a brief moment, this report is linked to a complaint of prosecutor Anne Thilly, who claimed to have been followed by a green car in October 1996. In the mean time, Marie France Botte (a rather peculiar woman), for a while Nathalie's chief financial supporter, was beaten up in front of her house by a person who then tried to strangle her. A note from January 18, 1997 of Theo Vandyck reads: "[Delamotte] strongly resembles the facial composite of the aggressor of Marie-France Botte... Delamotte knew Nihoul... Delamotte was in contact with a person named Antoine [almost certainly the pimp of X1], a friend of Nihoul." The details Nathalie gave about the network turned out to be compatible with information the police already had. Theo Vandyck, her early interviewer and the only person she really trusted, said: "You needed to have patience with her, but when you see all that she could tell us in the early stage of the investigation, then you know: she knows the milieu that we were so interested at the time through and through." As with X1, Nathalie quite often either went hysterical or fell completely silent. In fact, she turned out to be even less ready to be interviewed (and certainly not interrogated) than X1. From January 16 to January 30, 1997, Nathalie was hypnotized three times in an effort to retrieve more detailed memories (and probably to make it through them without having to be restrained again). In the third session she remembered an "old lady with a walking stick" who was a close associate of her prince. She remembered the name of this lady as "Bérénice d'Aurschot". She described how she was 14 years old (1979) when she was first brought to "Maison de d'Aurschot". A description of the place included: "green shutters, gravel, white, no etage, near to a chateau". A number of visits were in December and January, others in July and September. At least one of the meetings took place during full moon. In response to the question to write down what comes back to her when she moves around the castle (in her mind), she made the notes (PV 150.035, January 30, 1997): ""Murder-around... In a circle around fire - have some candles - everybody is standing except the baby and the sheep - the baby cries - he cannot cry - he cannot breathe because he is impure - and it is a boy." She describes the murder of the baby and how his blood is mixed with that of the slaughtered sheep - Then they burn the baby and the sheep, and everybody is having sex with each other - the monster has left. They tear out the heart of the baby. She describes some signs that she noticed (cross - stars)." Prince Alexandre de Merode and at least a dozen others were present, including her father. The name she mentioned appears to be the d'Arschot Schoonhoven family (counts), although a "Berenice" is hard to find (says nothing at this points). This family has historically been closely associated with families like De Croy, Chimay, De Ligne, and a number of others, including Windisch-Gratz and the Belgian royals. Interestingly, anno 2006, Count Guillaume d'Arschot Schoonhoven is a director of Compagnie du Zoute in Knokke, together with Counts Maurice, Leopold, and Paul Lippens and Nadine Lippens. This family is one of the most notorious among children who are part of the abuse network. Apparently, when Nathalie was talking about "Maison de d'Aurschot" she meant Chateau d'Ohain, just south-east of Brussels (PV 150.674: "Places and facts... Chateau de Lasnes. 1979-94." PV 150.729: "Chateau de Lasnes = chateau de Ohain". Talks about a ceremony that took place there in which a child was killed). Interestingly, within several miles of Chateau d'Ohain one can also find Chateau de la Hulpe on Domaine Solvay and Domaine d'Argenteuil of the late King Leopold III and Princess Liliane de Rethy, which all appear in the Dutroux file. Additionally, the (former?) gamekeeper and woodsman of Chateau Genval (nearby very luxurious Hotel) and/or La Hulpe was named a violent paedophile in 1994. At some point Nathalie also mentioned Castle Dongelberg as a place of abuse (owned by Opus Dei). X2 also claimed that children had been abused at Dongelberg, while in other reports the castle is mentioned as a place where conspirators had organized several meetings in the 1970s and 1980s when they attempted to overthrow the Belgian state. Theo Vandyck, the only inspector Nathalie completely trusted, suffered a stroke one or two days after Nathalie's third hypnotic regression (about the satanic ritual). As a result Vandyck and Gerard were replaced by Philippe Pourbaix and Baudouin Dernicourt, two "re-readers" who were working with Commandant Duterme to remove De Baets from the X1 interviews and to subsequently "discredit" X1. These new interviewers/interrogators made it absolutely clear that they didn't believe a word of what Nathalie was saying. Their extreme scepticism, combined with the way they interrogated (instead of interviewing and trying to confirm), completely sent Nathalie off the deep end. On at least two occasions she invented events and went through some personal suffering to make it appear real (although in the first case it seems quite obvious that she was trying to make a statement). At some point, she also confused the names of her two most important abusers, besides her father (although that's almost certainly a result of the oppressive and abusive interrogation techniques used by the new interrogators, not the least because the de Merode family has also been named by other victims). On March 17, 1997 she decided to quit. The biggest problem all along with Nathalie was that she really was a mythomaniac to some extent (almost certainly a result of her extreme abuse), especially when she wasn't taken serious. To her first interviewers she would sometimes state that what she told them a minute ago was not accurate. However, the really serious inventing seems to have only begun after the new interviewers arrived on the scene. Marc Reisinger, the psychologist who later examined X1 and came to support her 100%, said that Nathalie's testimony could not be trusted, because she was suffering from pathomimie, a tendency to inflict physical harm to one's own body in order to play a victim. This did not mean she was not a victim of very severe child abuse, which she obviously was, but a detailed testimony to be used in court could not be considered reliable. When Nathalie's family was contacted, her mother said that Nathalie was a dangerous person who tried to "destroy" people she didn't like. According to her mother, grandmother, brothers and ex-boyfriend, Nathalie's accusations against her father were "unthinkable" and a "disgrace" to her family (not that strange considering the abuse was taking place within the family). The father and his present wife, who resided in Spain, were not questioned. Supposedly, his present wife had said to Nathalie that her father "had started again". The Spanish police reported to their Belgian counterpart that Nathalie's father "appears to be protected". Cecile Z., a police officer who lived together with Nathalie W., wrote: "Pourbaix just kept repeating that everything Nathalie said had been investigated and that nothing checked out... He suggested to me that I go through the stuff of Nathalie and do my own investigation that way... [I know hard evidence is necessary], but claiming, like Pourbaix did, that Nathalie is fantasist, a psychopath, a mythomaniac and the biggest manipulator in the world, that is way out of line. Believe me, these are not interpretations, these are words I literally heard." Ludmilla, a psychologist at Botte's foundation, concurred: "I think this was a set up and that we were dealing with disinformation, which not only was meant to destabilize the victim, but also to discredit her in her own environment." In March, after Nathalie had ceased cooperation with the new interviewers, Pourbaix also contacted the neighbor of Nathalie and Cecile, warning her that she shouldn't leave her children around Nathalie. The neighbor recorded one of the phone calls with Pourbaix and gave it to Nathalie, who in turn confronted Pourbaix with it. The result was that Nathalie's house was searched, the tape confiscated and the neighbor threatened with possible legal steps for having violated secrecy agreements. In early April 1997, Duterme began to worry about Nathalie telling everything she knew to family, friends and reporters. Within two weeks, however, the media began a full scale attack on Nathalie instead. Theo Vandyck, the early interviewer who she had trusted, had recovered enough from his stroke to find out what was happening at Neufchateau. It turned out that Pourbaix and his colleagues had contacted the media in an effort to discredit Nathalie. When Vandyck pointed out to Pourbaix that he risked being prosecuted for violating official secrets, he was told that Duterme and Col. Brabant of the BOB had given their full support for the media campaign. Vandyck's inquiries were answered with a brief letter from Langlois telling him to leave the Nathalie W. case alone. According to Vandyck, Pourbaix called Nathalie a "whore" who was manipulating the whole Dutroux investigation. Pourbaix for some reason had become so upset with Nathalie that he began to use her picture at the shooting range for target practice. Nathalie's dossier was closed on April 25, 1997. She finally found job in mid-1998, but within days the gendarmerie stopped by informing her that she needed to be interrogated for something pertaining to the Dutroux-case. In the past she had always been contacted personally in a very discreet manner, either by mail, by phone or a pager she always carried with her. This unnecessary move on part of the gendarmerie resulted in the loss of her job. Marie-France Botte, the person who initially supported Nathalie, had to close the doors of her foundation around this same time. In late 1998, Botte attempted to commit suicide, which failed.
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