Lost innocence

DID they hold hands in the dark, little Julie and Melissa? Did they tell each other stories in the dungeon where only the bogey men came to visit? Were they too drugged to know where they were and what was happening to them? We can only hope so.

The nine months Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo spent in captivity before they were left to starve to death are beyond our worst nightmares. Even more unthinkable is the idea that their screams may be recorded on the pornographic video tapes that Belgian police have seized as evidence.

It has been a week of despair and fury for Belgium. Fifteen children have vanished over the last six years. Seven have been found dead.

On Saturday, the bodies of Julie and Melissa were dug up in a village garden the name of its owner has been added to the list of monsters: Hindley, Hamilton, West, and now Dutroux.

Two days earlier, Marc Dutroux had led police to one of his houses, where they found Sabine Dardenne (12) and Laetitia Delhez (14), sexually abused and locked in a specially built dungeon, but alive. Neighbours said police had searched the house two days earlier and found nothing.

Suddenly, the disappearances all over Belgium started to look like a pattern, with the net spreading beyond the borders. All the links pointed to a 39 year old dark haired man, his blonde second wife Michelle Martin and several accomplices.

Julie and Melissa died in March when Dutroux was serving a prison sentence: Dutroux has told police he was so angry at his associate, Bernard Weinstein who, he said, had starved the children that he killed him by feeding him barbiturates and buried him alive alongside the two girls.

IF evil has a smell then it is the smell of damp earth that comes from inside one of Marc Dutroux's houses around the Charleroi area.

The shabby redbrick at 17 Rue des Hayettes may be one of Belgium's many "houses of horror", some 11 Dutroux properties which will be searched in the coming days. The man who lived there, Michael Diakostravanos, was charged with association on Thursday.

First police will use dogs trained to find live bodies, then dogs trained to find corpses. Architects will search for wall and floor cavities and finally sophisticated British search equipment will do a last check.

On Wednesday, Superintendent John Bennett of Gloucester police arrived to advise Belgian police. Because of his experience on the West investigation he is known as the world's best bodyfinder. This stony faced policeman in a dark suit touring the Dutroux houses is the most visible sign of international police co operation. Off camera, the faxes and computers are coordinating a European wide search for Dutroux's third pair of victims, An Marchal (19) and Eefje Lambrecks (17).

He has admitted to being involved in their abduction in Ostende a year ago. They are still alive, he has told police, but not in the country. Estimates have put the value of a child in the prostitution trade at $45,000. It seems he kept the younger children in his dungeons, and sold the older ones.

An's parents, Paul and Betty, have had a week of heart stopping false alarms. Everyday a new rumour circulates that their daughter has been found alive somewhere, usually in Eastern Europe.

There is speculation that police have information only one of the two girls is alive, but until the other body is found and identified they cannot be sure. Both the Marchals and the Lambrecks hope is it is Interpol, and not John Bennett, which finds their daughter.

At the house next door to Dutroux's on Rue des Hayettes, Abdul Bouzkkif says his nondescript neighbour employed him recently to cement two rooms, five metres square. He also cleared the soil from the back wall to expose an air vent to the cellar. Dutroux told him it was to keep the damp out of the house.

In the cellar, there are boxes of food and bags of rubbish. Police believe Dutroux was building another storage room for children, the commodities that made the unemployed electrician a rich man.

On Thursday night public prosecutor Michel Bourlet said there were "indications" the searchers may find more bodies. It is thought that police are matching rooms in Dutroux's houses with rooms featured in his video tapes.

All along the auto routes where Dutroux's henchmen drove their cargo, huge road safety signs show a male cartoon character smiling and waving from his car as a boy and girl cross in front. It is a sign of Belgium's regard for children, along with the hundreds of playgrounds, parks and children's shops. In the last week, the poster has taken on a sinister edge.

The Belgians have held their children tightly since Saturday, and warned them again not to speak to strangers. Yesterday morning, a two hour phone in programme was broadcast by the government department responsible for children, to allow them to talk to experts about the night terrors Dutroux has given them.

AT Julie and Melissa's funeral, three year old Ambre Villamil held a postcard with the dead pictures on it. Did she understand what happened to them? "Tell the lady," her mother prompts, "They were stolen," Ambre says solemnly. Her brother Valentine (5) pipes up proudly, "And I know the name of the thief . . . Marc Dutroux."

In a small office in Liege a group of volunteers has the names of these stolen children on labelled shelves. The organisation, Marc Et Corine, is named after two young people murdered in 1992 by two drug addicts on early release from prison. When Marc and Corine first went missing, police treated the case as one of runaways.

"We listen to parents and gather all the information they can collect. We do not lose time when they go missing," explains Pascale Detry.

For Phillipe Deleuze, the organisation's financial controller, his work is not a job, but a mission. His 16 year old daughter, Laurence, was murdered in 1992. Ten days after her disappearance police found a mutilated body and returned it to the family of a drug addict who had been reported missing.

They discovered their mistake when . . . that girl phoned her parents to tell them she was still alive. Only then did they check the dental records of Laurence Deleuze and match them to the body. Such disregard for the voices of the people who know these teenagers: best was also a factor in An and Eeje's disappearance. It was more than a week before police believed what their parents were saying and started treating the case as an abduction.

The police have never found who ever killed Phillipe's daughter. His handsome face is deeply lined and the end of his cigarette is chewed. He says he works now "for my daughter and for the others".

Information comes in to Marc Et Corine by post and telephone and is sent out to branches all over Belgium, and to police. Last year, this information helped locate the bodies of a baby and a 19 year old man.

On Thursday morning they sorted the sacks of mail into boxes. There were presents and cards for Sabine and Laetitia, the two rescued girls, sorted into boxes under their names. The box beside them under the two names, now linked forever, is full of sympathy cards for Julie and Melissa's parents.

The case appears to have been a catalogue of monumental blunders. On Thursday, justice minister Stefaan de Clerck, in the firm voice of a man placing his head on the block, confirmed that police faxed a photograph of Dutroux to police in the girls' village of Grace Hollogne, almost immediately after the two girls went missing.

Dutroux was a prime suspect. And the house where they were finally found dead was searched twice.

Not since the Heysel Stadium disaster during the European Cup Final in 1985 (in which 41 Belgian and Italian football supporters died after they were charged by British fans and a wall and safety fence collapsed) has so much public anger been directed at the Belgian government. Dutroux's release after three years for abduction and rape was sanctioned by a review board's vote of four to two.

In response to the outrage Mr de Clerck has announced a penal commission to vet decisions on prisoner releases. Reports will be written, studies done. But the Belgian public wants more than just the tweaking of the system that failed the "angels of the autoroute", as Julie and Melissa were christened. They were last seen waving at traffic from a flyover bridge near their home.

Like Annie McCarrick and Jo Jo Dullard in Ireland, their disappearance and their faces had become public property. As the priest at their funeral put it, "They were our children."

Posters and postcards were sent all over the world by their parents: an internet site was devoted to information gathering. The grim discovery that they were holed up in a village dungeon, under the noses of police, has turned the country inside out.

In shops, garages, cafes and bars a petition worded by the Marc Et Corine organisation has attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures. It calls for non commutable sentences for serious crimes. Under the current system, prisoners normally only serve a third of their sentence for a first offence and two thirds for a second.

Others have more in mind for Dutroux. "He must be killed," says a woman holding her granddaughter's doll outside the house where Sabine and Laetitia were found alive. "But not immediately; slowly in the same way that he killed Julie and Melissa."

It is a call screamed from the sheet draped over bridges and road signs, the leaflets, posters and black ribboned homes. Death not just for Dutroux but for all paedophiles some say. On a small piece of paper dropped beside the children's playground in Liege's elegant park, one line sums up the thirst for vengeance. "Dutroux - the people will have your skin."