It was Christianity that brought a fundamentally different view of humanity.

A human being no longer belonged to his master but to God.

Our society is gradually becoming a post-Christian society in which there is a return to the pre-Christian vision of man.

The process is underway but has not yet fully completed itself.

Hence, we object not only to the murder of Julie, Melissa, An, Eefje and Loubna,

but also to the way in which they were raped and abused as objects of for the satisfaction of sexual lust. But we do not object to using people as objects when they consent to it.

And we do not object to aborting unborn human beings. If this process continues, the day may well come

when we consider the crimes committed on the Belgian children as only

infringements of their parents property rights!

Some Post-Christian Realities By Alexandra Cohen

Alexandra Cohen, a member of the Belgian Parliament, is the mother of five young children and a former lecturer (in Linguistics) at the universities of Ghent and Antwerp.



I n march of this year, yet another body of a cruelly murdered child was found in Belgium. It was the corpse of nine-year old Loubna, who was abducted, sexually abused, tortured, and murdered five years ago. Loubna is victim number five, after Julie, Melissa, An and Eefje. About a dozen other children (mostly girls but also a few boys) are still missing. Some of them disappeared as long as twenty years ago. A colleague of mine is a member of the Parliamentary Commission set up to investigate what went wrong in the judicial inquiry into the child-abuse cases. He saws that Belgian authorities expect to find more corpses in the near future. Thus, by the time you read this, Belgium will possibly have attended yet another funeral for a child who was sadistically abused and murdered. L et me introduce myself: I am a politician, a member of the Belgian Parliament, and a mother of five, three girls and two boys. My eldest child is thirteen, my youngest five. When Loubna was found and the details of her death emerged, it made me physically ill. Many parents in Belgium feel sick these days and, unfortunately, it seems that our predicament has not yet ended. The sewers of Belgium started opening last August when police officers succeeded in rescuing Sabine and Laetitia, two young girls of twelve and fourteen, who had been kidnapped during the preceding months. The girls were liberated from a dungeon where they had been kept as living sexual toys for perverts. Soon after the discovery of Sabine and Laetitia, they found the bodies of Julie and Melissa, two eight-year old girls who had been abducted in June 1995. They had been locked up, then violently raped and tortured for months before they were finally starved to death (evidently in February, 1996). In September 1996, a month after the gruesome discovery of Julie and Melissa, the bodies of An and Eefje were found. These young women, seventeen and nineteen years old, had also been abducted in August of the previous year. The police never disclosed the terrible things that happened to them nor in what circumstances they died. Possibly the authorities think that Belgians will not be able to stomach the horror? The only thing we know is that An and Eefje had been kidnapped, abused and finally murdered by the same gang that abducted Julie, Melissa, Sabine and Laetitia. This gang was led by a man called Marc Dutroux, who had a record of sexual abuse. He had been convicted and sentenced (in April 1989) to a 13-year prison term for the rape of five children and the sexual torture of an elderly woman. In view of his good conduct in jail (no potential victims victims ), his term was shortened. This was compounded by an amnesty granted by the King of Belgium, which led to his being released in April 1992. Americans may find it hard to believe what happened next  but then you do not live in a welfare state. What happened was that after leaving prison, Marc Dutroux applied for and received official invalid status, which entitled him to generous welfare benefits. Dutroux claimed that this imprisonment had led to psychological damage, which meant that he, as former electrician, would never be able to work for a living again. As a consequence, together with Michelle Martin, his wife and accomplice (in kidnapping children and locking them up, though not in sexually abusing them), he received a monthly check of 80,000 Belgian francs ($2,700!) from the Belgian welfare system. Part of this money was used by Dutroux to build cells in some of the cellars of the eight (!) houses he owned. He needed the cells to imprison girls. This was common knowledge to some of his friends, one of whom duly informed the police authorities in October, 1993. However, the police did not react. After the first girls had been abducted, it took more than one full year before the police started to consider Marc Dutroux as a serious suspect. He was arrested rather coincidentally because a nun, whose hobby it was to learn license plates by heart, remembered having seen his car near the place where Laetitia had been abducted. As a result, police were able to release Sabine (kidnapped on May 28, 1996) and Laetitia (kidnapped on August 9) alive from Dutrouxs dungeons last August 15th. Shortly after the arrest of Dutroux and his wife, a Brussels businessman, Michel Nihoul, was arrested. It is not clear whether Dutroux kidnapped the children on the order of Nihoul or whether Nihoul was just a customer who rented or bought girls from Dutroux. Nihoul was involved in organising sex parties for all kinds of perverts in high places, such as the army, the police the judiciary, and political and media circles. R umours about the sex parties, the so-called Pink Ballets (les Ballets Roses), have been rampant in Belgium for about two decades. The names of prominent politicians and even the present Belgian King, Albert (who succeeded his brother in 1993 and used to have a reputation for being a playboy), had been mentioned in this connection, but nobody had been able to prove anything. Rumours about the Pink Ballets persisted, but many journalists denounced them as being the Belgian political equivalent of the Loch Ness monster. Though some claim to have seen its shadow, serious people do not believe it exists. Victim number five, Loubna, was kidnapped by a car mechanic, Patrick Derochette, on a sunny afternoon in August, 1992, when the nine-year old girl was on her way to a grocery shop and walked past Derochettes garage, one street away from where she lived. Like Dutroux, Derochette also had a criminal record for sexual perversity regarding children. He had previously raped four boys and had spent seven weeks (yes, not even a full two months!) in prison for these crimes because doctors claimed he was some kind of lunatic who could not help his behavior. He raped Loubna but claims that her death was an accident because she fell and hit her head against an iron trunk. He then hid her body in the trunk and kept it in the basement of his garage for five years. One witness, however, a school friend of Loubna, claims that she saw the girl two weeks after her disappearance in Derochettes car. The police never took this witness seriously and did not bother Derochette against until the whole inquiry into Loubnas disappearance was done over again early this year. Her body was found in Derochettes trunk on March 5. If the witness is right, Loubna was probably also used a child prostitute for some time. The police have discovery that Derochette knew Michel Nihoul. The both visited the same sex bars and Nihoul got his petrol at Derochettes garage. T he Belgian police are currently also investigating satanic sects. It is possible that Nihoul was involved in satanic ceremonies, and it is certain that some of the members of the Dutroux group had business contacts with satanic groups. It is not clear whether the participants in satanic orgies took their satanism as a serious religion or whether some of the sex parties were just dressed up as satanic rituals in order to give the perverts an added kick. The Belgian authorities started an investigation into satanic sects after the police found a letter form a satanic high priest to Bernard Weinstein, one of Dutrouxs two accomplices in the kidnapping of children. (Mrs. Dutroux being the other.) The letter asked for a delivery in order to be able to perform the rituals of Walpurgis Night. The delivery is believed to refer to young children needed as sacrifices in a black mass. There are many rumours concerning the satanic sects. Some claim that female sect members were deliberately impregnated so that their newly born children could be killed on satanic altars. To me as a mother, this sounds so fantastically horrible that I pray it isnt true. If it is true, however, I doubt whether the Belgians would be very much surprised after the other truths they have been forced to face. (Perhaps that Loch Ness monster really exists!) For instance, some of the police officers questioned by the Parliamentary Commission confirmed that there have indeed been Pink Ballets. Now, by taking the rumours about the sex orgies seriously, the authorities are on the brink of a breakthrough I the investigation concerning the so-called Crazy Brabant Killers, a murderous gang that killed 29 people in Brabant, the province surrounding the Belgian capital of Brussels, in the early and mid-1980s. T he Crazy Brabant Killers got their name because, at the time, nobody had a clue as to what their motives could be. The gang specialised in robbing supermarkets in broad daylight. The booty was always very poor, but that did not seem to bother them. The reason why the committed their crimes, apparently, was the thrill they got from slaughtering every supermarket shopper in sight. The shot everyone, children included, sometimes killing up to eight innocent shoppers or passers-by in one go. It started with the mu9rder of twelve people at various occasions in late 1982 and early 1983. Then the wave of terror subsided, only to be followed by a new wave in the Fall of 1985, resulting in the death of 17 victims. Then it stopped. The investigation into the Crazy Brabant Killers got nowhere. Strange things happened. Officers who were making progress in the case were taken off it, and substantial evidence disappeared from the files never to be found again. Today, almost twelve years later, the key to the mystery seems to have been found. A scrutiny of the gangs victims could be linked to the Pink Ballets. The apparently random killings of the Crazy Brabant Killers had been a cover-up for eliminating dangerous witnesses of sex parties (probably with minors-orgies among consenting adults are not illegal under Belgian law)(. This discovery has prompted the authorities to investigate the whole dossier again, but whether this will lead anywhere is doubtful, because many sensitive documents have been lost. There used to be a photo in the judicial files of an army general, stark naked, during one of the Pink Ballets, one investigator told the parliamentary committee last February. I know because I have seen the picture. But now it is gone. We cannot find it anywhere. Tapes, too, and typed-out manuscripts of police interviews have gone missing, as well as a list of people who had allegedly attended sessions of the Pink Ballets. N ow that the sewers have opened and the stench is there for all to smell, it is no wonder that ordinary Belgians have lost confidence in their judicial and political authorities. It is generally assumed that the incompetence of the authorities to solve the mystery of the Crazy Brabant Killers, the Pink Ballets, the satanic orgies-and the reason why it took years to arrest Dutroux, Nihoul and Derochette-has to do with the fact that these criminals were protected by very high circles. On October 20 last year, over 250,000 of Belgiums ten million inhabitants took to the streets of Brussels for a silent march, carrying white flowers and white balloons, and demanding that justice be done, morality restored, and children protected. The White March was one of the most impressive demonstrations that Belgium, and possibly the whole of Europe, had ever seen. Not one slogan was shouted, but the silence of the demonstrators resounded louder and more clearly than a million worlds and cries. Some people did, however, carry banners in the White March and there were some incidents at the beginning. Banners of political parties were objected to and had to be put away. But also banners demanding for all children, including the unborn, had to be put away. Not all the protesters demanding protection for Belgiums children were willing to demand protection for unborn children as well-some even took it as an insult to dare to suggest such a thing. I n November, shortly after the White March, it was revealed that the second-highest politician in the country, Vice Premier Elio Di Rupo, is a promiscuous homosexual with a preference for adolescent boys. Di Rupo, a prominent leader of the Belgian Socialist Party, did not deny that his sex life consists of a series of one-night stands with young men, often prostitutes that he or his chauffeur pick up from the streets. But he was able to shift the debate to the question of whether he had had sex with boys of under or over sixteen years (the former being illegal and the latter legal under Belgian law). No one could prove the former and the (aptly titled?) Vice Premier got away with it when his Socialist Party threatened to bring down the government if Di Rupo were forced to resign-the Christian Democrats of Premier Jean-Luc Dehaene gave in. More, a few weeks later the government declared its intention to lower the age of sexual consent from 16 to 14. And the people, who had given such a powerful [if not actually internally consistent] cry for moral rectitude during the White March, did not really seem to care! I mentioned above that I was physically sick on the evening that poor Loubnas body was found and the details emerged of how she had died and lain dead for years only two streets away from her home in a building that her agonised parents passed nearly every day. Earlier that same day, I had given a press conference to condemn at 16-week abortion (illegal in Belgium, where abortion is only permitted up to 12 weeks). It has been subsidised by the Belgian welfare authorities because the mother claimed that having a child would make it difficult for her to complete an occupational training course. The welfare authorities considered this to be a good reason for an abortion never mind that it was illegal-and, as the woman could not pay for it herself, they decided to pay for it with taxpayers money. As a Belgian taxpayer, I felt cheated. We pay our taxes to the welfare state to enable it to defend our children, which it does not do. Instead it uses the money to kill other children. But, again, the public did not seem to bother. Although an unborn child was killed and although the abortion was illegal under Belgian law, the press and the authorities defended the decision to help the woman and most people seemed to accept it. T he contrast between the outcry over the deaths of the pedophiles victims and the acceptance of abortion, even beyond the limits of the law, calls for some reflection. Julie, Melissa, An, Eefje, Loubna and the other children whose bodies are still missing died because they had fallen into the hands of evil men who did not respect them as unique human beings, but regarded them merely as objects for the satisfaction of their perverted sexual lust (perverted, because sexual lust for children is abnormal). In an abortion, the child is not the object needed to satisfy (normal) sexual desire, however, lustful, but it is the object that can result from the satisfaction of it. And though one may argue that murdering a living child in order to fulfill a perverted sexual lust is definitely worse than killing the unborn child resulting from normal heterosexual intercourse, it remains true that the unborn child is also killed and discarded as if it were merely an object. Indeed, the unborn child is regarding as no more than an unwanted side-effect of intercourse, the intercourse being seen as an end in itself-even to the extent that it stands above the life of the child resulting from it. In this sense, such sexual acts are also perverted in that the act and the pleasure it provides are elevated to something noble and worth pursuing, while the child is reduced to a discardable nothing. The fact that ordinary people no longer seem to be appalled by abortion-and their ready acceptance of the concept of the unwanted child-illustrates a terrible truth: the notion that there can be a discardable side effect of intercourse that is nothing more than a problem to the woman has become embedded in the collective subconscious of our society. It is only a small step to the idea the sexual act is infinitely more valuable than the life of the child, or any respect for the child, or for life itself. This idea underlies the statements of a vociferous group in our society, including not only militant feminists but also educators who propagate such thinking among our children. T here is also a second aspect which calls for some reflection. The children in Belgium were murdered by others than their parents and against the will of these parents. But unwanted unborn children are killed at the demand of their own parents. When we object to the latter, we are confronted with the question of what entitles us to do so. [Just as ancient Greek infanticide], In ancient Rome abortion was legal if the father (the paterfamilias) agreed to it. However, he was also entitled to kill the members of his household, such as his slaves and even his children. People were not regarded as unique human beings, but as part of the patrimony of the paterfamilias. They were objects and as such could be discarded. It was Christianity that brought a fundamentally difference view of humanity. A human being no longer belonged to his master but to God. Our society is gradually becoming a post-Christian society in which there is a return to the pre-Christian vision of man. The process is underway but has not yet fully completed itself. Hence, we object not only to the murder of Julie, Melissa, An, Eefje and Loubna, but also to the way in which they were raped and abused as objects of for the satisfaction of sexual lust. But we do not object to using people as objects when they consent to it. And we do not object to aborting unborn human beings. If this process continues, the day may well come when we consider the crimes committed on the Belgian children as only infringements of their parents property rights! The idea that children are property of the parents also underlies the right to have children which is used to justify in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood. As in the case of abortion, the argument is twisted. If it is true that unwanted childlessness is a terrible affliction, it is true precisely because of the outdated paradigm of the child as a unique human being-the old-fashioned belief that it is a child which makes a couples love tangible and gives meaning to their unique two in one flesh relationship. Whereas the now-available reproductive technology reduces the child to a commodity which can be ordered, bought, farmed as it were, to fulfill the demand of the customers and owners, its parents. I mentioned the rumour that Belgian women may have been impregnated only for the purpose of producing children to be killed as ritual sacrifices during black masses. I said that I pray this is not true-it seems to horrible-but also that I could no longer be surprised if it were true. Not only because in the past months Belgians have had to face all kinds of horrible truths which were unthinkable only a year ago, but also because such things would be totally consistent with the post-Christian horrors which are increasingly being accepted in our society.