Belgium weighs pre-parole evaluation of child-killer Dutroux

A Belgian court is to set up inside a prison on Thursday to hear arguments about whether one of Europe’s most notorious child-killers, Marc Dutroux, should receive the psychiatric examination that precedes a parole bid.

But such is the infamy of Dutroux and his crimes that the request has stoked indignation among his victims’ families and the public.

The convicted paedophile and murderer, who turns 63 in November, was given a life sentence in 2004 for abducting and raping six girls in 1995-1996 and for the deaths of four of them — two were murdered and two died of hunger in a dungeon he kept in the basement of his home.

Including time in pre-trial custody, Dutroux has been locked up for the past 23 years. He is being held in solitary confinement in the Nivelles penitentiary in central Belgium, where Thursday’s hearing will take place.

The families of his victims say he is “a manipulative pervert” who has never owned up to what he did nor expressed remorse.

But his defence lawyers denounce his prolonged incarceration. One of them, Bruno Dayez, told AFP that nobody deserves to “rot on his feet” behind bars.

– Five judges –

The sentence enforcement court in the prison will study Dutroux’s request to have experts conduct an examination to determine his mental state and risk of offending again. No immediate decision will be made; rather the court will deliberate on the arguments.

Dayez said a psychological evaluation is “a necessary step” for parole which his client hopes to obtain in the next couple of years.

But even if the examination goes ahead — and the lawyer said he believed the prosecutor’s office was favourable — there was no guarantee the experts’ opinion would be positive for the request for a release back into society.

Because Dutroux is in the category of inmates serving at least 30-year terms, the number of judges hearing the matter has been boosted to five, instead of the usual three. They have to reach a unanimous decision, which cannot be appealed.

Its proceedings have been criticised by the families of Dutroux’s victims.

Georges-Henri Beauthier, a lawyer representing a father whose daughter was killed and a woman who survived Dutroux’s dungeon, said the court did not give an opportunity for counter arguments nor full access to the case file.

“My problem is, who selects the experts? And what are they going to look at exactly?” he said to AFP.

He added that a previous conviction Dutroux had for a series of rapes in 1989 should be brought into evidence to underline the paedophile’s “particularly manipulative and dangerous” character.

His clients, Jean-Denis Lejeune and Laetitia Delhez, last weekend said in a statement they would not attend the prison hearing because of the “minimal” opportunity for them to testify.

– Release for accomplices –

Dutroux in 2013 asked to be transferred to house arrest with an electronic tracking ankle bracelet but the court refused.

Any parole for him should be seen as “an illusion,” the Belgian newspaper Le Soir recently said.

His accomplices, however, have won release.

One, Michel Lelievre, who was sentenced to 25 years, has just been paroled — as long as he finds lodgings in a specified area.

Dutroux’s ex-wife Michelle Martin, sentenced to 30 years as an accomplice, was paroled in 2012.

She has been given accommodation by a former judge after she spent time in a convent.