Dutroux saga has rocked Belgians' faith in authority

THE words, from a student project on nursing, are those of Eefje Lambrecks, read out at her funeral here last Saturday. Still in shock, a whole country asks itself if her simple faith brought her some comfort during the hellish incarceration that she must have known was a prelude to death. In, the face of such appalling events we clutch at straws.

At the other funeral the same day, Paul Marchal, the father of her friend An, spoke for the parents of all the disappeared children: "An and Eeje should not have been buried today. We know when they disappeared. We do not know when they died. But what is clear and certain is that if the necessary resources had been put in place . . . this funeral need not have taken place.

"One year ago I made this complaint and received hardly any response. For a year we have asked questions and had no replies. For a year we have had to search to no avail. For a year we have been consigned to the periphery, abandoned. That is why we did not want the authorities here in the front rows of this funeral.

"We will watch now to see if they keep their promises. That we can do only with the help and solidarity of the whole population. The thousands of letters we have received prove we have that."

Four dead girls. Two deeply traumatised. Others still missing. Today the searches continue. Now the net is spread wider to the homes of other paedophiles and to police officers suspected of covering up Marc Dutroux's stolen car rackets. Now there are suggestions that Dutroux and his wife Michelle Martin were slowly poisoning her senile mother.

Martin's alleged active complicity has bewildered even the most cynical. It was she who let Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo starve to death in the basement of their home while her husband was in prison. Amazingly this woman was allowed to return to teaching in 1988 after being implicated in her husband's previous rape and kidnap of minors.

The prosecutor promises that he will pursue all those identifiable on the hundreds of pornographic videos that have been unearthed, no matter how exalted, "if I am allowed". Speculation that prominent people are involved is rife. The Minister for Justice promises no stone will be left unturned.

That the families should specifically ask King Albert not to attend the funeral because of his earlier lack of interest has hurt the monarchy badly, a problem not only for Albert but Belgium itself. The monarch is one of the elements binding this uneasy country's bitterly divided linguistic communities together. This week the king took the unprecedented, unconstitutional step of making a public declaration on the need to reform the judicial system.

The bitterness of the families over the role of the authorities, at the inertia, incompetence and downright sabotage of investigations has turned the horror story of undreamed of depravity into ii political crisis of profound proportions for Belgium.

Le Soir Illustre, in a classic piece of journalism, wrote last week of the sense "that ordinary people feel they have lost all control of events around them". An opinion poll this week found 95 per cent of those interviewed had no faith in the Belgian judicial/police system. Another poll found only 3 per cent believe the killers of the Socialist politician, Andre Cools, will be brought to justice.

For five years the investigation has languished. Suddenly last week a new secret informant produced evidence that has led to the arrest of Cools's former Liege sidekick and former social welfare minister, Alain van der Biest, his assistant, Richard Taxquet, and three others, on charges of being involved in taking out a contract on Cools. The latter, it is believed, was feared likely to blow the whistle on Van der Biest's mafia connections.

The sudden flurry of activity led to the resignation of the head of the Liege police "Cools"

Raymond Bose, who had assiduously steered the investigation away from Taxquet for so long. Taxquet and some of the minor players have now, according to press reports, started to sing like canaries, implicating Van der Biest. Alone he still protests his innocence.

What is remarkable to outside observers is the extraordinary degree of connection (sociologically) of these two huge scandals in cities a hundred miles apart, underlining fundamental flaws in the Belgian political system.

One of the key figures in both cases is the investigating magistrate, Jean Marc Connerotte, widely praised for his speed and vigour once given responsibility for the Dutroux cases. In 1992, while investigating the Cools case, he had attempted to lay charges against Taxquet and a number of others. Within days he was removed from the case on groundless charges of corruption. Taxquet walked free as the new judge pursued other lines of inquiry.

The circles of petty and not so petty criminals Dutroux mixed with are little different from those who killed Cools. No one here will be surprised to find an actual link.

It was only a matter of time before the explosion of public anger that had swept away police coma placency over missing children would do the same over the Cool debacle. Much more is yet to come out. But now the ball is roll ing and the strands of corruption unravelling, many are beginning to ask if a traumatised Belgium can put it back together again.