Picture by Jan Rosseel, from “Belgian Autumn”
[2025-06-16] Blue Rose Reports — In the first part of THE MISSING PIECES, I talked about how I wanted to look into the unknown areas surrounding the Dutroux affair. The shadows. The first entry in this series sets the tone for what we’re going to be dealing with. If you haven’t read it yet, you can check it out here :
This time, we’re going to take a look at a story told to us by a retired Belgian gendarme, Marc Toussaint. We’ll go from the dirty 80s in Brussels, in the wake of the Brabant Killers and the Haemers gang attacks, to the X witnesses investigation in the late 90s. Not everything will be covered in this part, PART III will finish the story. If you’re wondering why we’ll cover such a wide variety of cases all at once, it’s because they will assemble, forming an intricate web of people and networks, showcasing how child trafficking and prostitution operated together, culminating in the shadows of the Dutroux-Nihoul affair. That’s why it is such a special story, and one that has stayed unknown in the English language, for a lack of translation. After reading this, the revelation that Dutroux might have just been a cog in a larger machine should come to you as no surprise.
Marc Toussaint worked as a gendarme in Uccle, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium’s capital. During his career, he was at one point part of the Belgian Royal Escort, the horse escort for the Belgian royal family. Toussaint wrote a book with the help of Xavier Rossey, a Belgian journalist. Called Tous manipulés? Avant, pendant, après l’affaire Dutroux (Were we all manipulated? Before, During, After the Dutroux Affair, in English), it is a great read and a great source for the Dutroux case, and I will be quoting it extensively in this piece. It’s the entire base for this story. If the source isn’t mentioned or there isn’t any footnote leading to a specific set of pages, it comes from that book. Toussaint’s sources, if outside of his gendarmerie investigation, will be mentioned. Otherwise, assume everything comes from police reports filed and quoted by Marc Toussaint, in his own book. Also, I mentioned the bit about him working for the Belgian royal family as a gendarme escort simply because Toussaint makes it known in his book that he doesn’t believe the Belgian royal family could have been involved in the Belgian X files, where X witnesses mention one member, former Prince and King, Albert II1. It’s his personal opinion and I disagree, but it doesn’t diminish the quality of his work. Toussaint has his own opinion about the X witnesses as well, we’ll get to talk about it in PART III.
Scan of my copy of Tous manipulés?, with the hand at the top of the cover doing the manipulating, wearing a gendarmerie uniform
Marc Toussaint (holding the mic) and Xavier Rossey (Dossiers Secrets d’État)
We’ll see how Marc Toussaint’s investigation into the Institut Bizaar, a front for a prostitution network, led him to work clandestinely for the Neufchâteau investigation cell of the Dutroux affair. After the White March of October 20th 1996, Toussaint got involved in the “White Comittees”, a series of local initiatives set up as mostly politically neutral and anti-corruption movements, a continuation of the White March. The goal was to deeply change Belgian society after the Dutroux affair and the numerous missing children cases. They were short lived because of the infighting and the lack of concrete goals or politics, as well as casual citizens leaving after a while, with only a few “die hards” remaining. Not to mention these were independent organisations, and so whoever formed it for their municipality would be in charge, and anybody could set up their chapter, with the parents of missing and dead children not being involved in any way with some of these groups. This also made it where it was easy to infiltrate any White Committee and sow dissent, accusing people of being pedophiles without any proof or simply throwing an egocentric fit.
A demonstration held by two White Commitees (Belga)
Toussaint started as a gendarme in 1986, right after the Brabant Killers shook Belgian society. He joined the Uccle (Brussels) gendarmerie in 1994. His investigation into the world of prostitution networks starts in early 1995, with a man called Farid Riffi. Farid reports to Toussaint that he’s being falsely accused of pimping two women, and so he wants to claim a file against them. One of them is named Bernadette Lepièce. Toussaint thinks this is a ruse to take legal advantage over the girls, and it seems like his intuition is right : the other woman, Sonia has previously reported him as a pimp, and Farid has files opened at other police stations. Toussaint then decides to look into him, learning that Farid’s lawyer is none other than Étienne Delhuvenne, a well known name in the prostitution milieu, but he doesn’t know that yet. Delhuvenne and his client Farid are involved together in a cooperative company, they sell drinks out of a small cabin called the Pavillon Malou, situated in one of Brussels’s parks, near a kids play area. It’s mostly used on weekends and on holidays by the local children and their parents, but Toussaint picks up interesting testimonies about BDSM parties being organized secretly at the cabin. We’ll get back to that in a bit.
Marc Toussaint starts looking into the people close to Farid and Delhuvenne. Toussaint auditions Bernadette Lepièce, mentioned earlier, who had Étienne Delhuvenne as a boyfriend and pimp until she reported him to the police in 1990. Since then, she’s been pressured to stop talking and denouncing him, with Farid harassing her over the phone. Bernadette worked for a very specific prostitution network in Belgium, one active in the 70s and 80s, know as the Fortunato-Montaricourt network, or Le Cercle de Tuna, Tuna’s Circle in English2. It was named after Fortuna “Tuna” Israel and Lydia Montaricourt, the two consecutive owners of this network. A whole article could be written about this specific network and so I’ll keep it concise. The Fortunato-Montaricourt prostitution network was used as a means for a Belgian consortium to secure building contracts in Saudi Arabia3. Called EuroSystem Hospitalier (ESH for short), this consortium4 was looking to win over hospital construction contracts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the early 70s. With the help of Lydia Montaricourt’s girls easing up the negotiations, in 1975, ESH was chosen and given a 900 million euros contract to build two hospitals in Saudi Arabia. The then Prince Albert II of Belgium was said to have weighted heavily in the discussions with Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia5, having visited the country and presented the ESH project to the Saudi prince in 1975. After the contract was given to ESH, the consortium mysteriously goes bust in July 1979 and the whole project gets cancelled. In the following investigation by Belgium’s tax inspection services, it’s established that ESH gave 225 million of euros of commissions to Belgian intermediaries (that includes possibly Prince Albert) to use their powers to promote the project to the Saudi royal family. It smells of massive scam.
The Director of Human Relations for EuroSystem Hospitalier was none other than Fortunato “Tuna” Israel, a madame6. Tuna Israel had of course absolutely no experience as an HR, but her prostitutes were known to be “orgy specialists”. An enigmatic figure, Tuna Israel was even said to be an intelligence asset7. Her prostitution network was hired across Europe to charm businessmen and politicians on behalf of ESH. Lydia Montaricourt, a prostitute working for Tuna, would later receive Tuna’s contacts books and inherit her network when she became a madame herself. It’s easy to see where this is going. Interrogated by the police in 1979 after a house search, Tuna would say that her role for ESH was :
[…] to find girls to keep the Prince [Albert] and his companions company during their travels abroad. These girls were prostitutes.
Fortunato Israel (holding the glass in the first picture, and the mic in the second one) and some of her girls at a party organised at the Jonathan (Père Ubu)
The police found a document at Tuna’s house that indicated she had been in contact with Roger Boas (we’ll talk about him later) and gendarmerie general Fernand Beaurir, the highest rank in the service. It later appeared that girls from Tuna’s network were used as company by Paul Vanden Boyenants (we will also get to him later), Roger Boas, and friends at a safari in Kenya - and not any safari, a little get together organised by none other than Adnan Khashoggi8, who owned the Mount Kenya Safari Club9. The Montaricourt-Tuna Israel case was later hushed up10, everyone denying any involvement, with important evidence like Lydia’s Montaricourt client list and her diary going missing, and any cop daring to look deeper into it was moved away from the case. This network was said to be part of the pink ballets11 and the Brabant Killers case, as part of the Pinon affair12. There’s nothing illegal about hiring prostitutes, but doing so in the context of sensitive negotiations, and possibly falling into blackmail territory is where the line gets blurred. Fortunato Israel never was charged and later fled to Malta, with the help of Roger Boas. In 1990, a former prostitute of Tuna’s Circle, Maud Sarr, would come forward and accuse politicians, magistrates, and policemen of participating in sex parties with girls from the network, including minors… But for now, let’s get back to our case at hand.
Adnan Khashoggi’s Mount Kenya Safari Club (Collectie Wereldmuseum)
Looking deeper into the Malou, Toussaint learns from the Woluwe (Brussels) police that one of their detectives, Mailleux13, is pretty well acquainted with Étienne Delhuvenne, and that the both of them often share a table at restaurants, accompanied by a man named Roland Potier. Delhuvenne is a very influential man according to Mailleux, and he’s the former lawyer and friend of Belgian gangster Patrick Haemers. Haemers is probably the most notorious Belgian criminal. He’s a good looking, bourgeois, tall, blonde man. He looks straight out of an American gangster movie. He’s known as Le grand blond, or the tall blonde man in English. A criminal organisation established itself around him and was commonly referred to as the “Haemers gang”. Haemers and his crew (which included gangsters Philippe Lacroix and Thierry Smars, and his gangster dad Achille Haemers, but not limited to) were specialists of robbing money transports. Usually non violent, the attacks turned deadly on the 4th of November 1985 in the town of Verviers14, where two postmen were killed by Haemers and his gang. The gendarmes escorting the transport were cuffed, but the two employees inside were killed instantly by the explosive charge used by the gang to get to the money. The timing is interesting as 5 days later, the Brabant Killers would strike for a final time, with their deadliest attack yet, in Alost. There’s an argument to be made that there could be an escalation in both operations, as part of the strategy of tension. Some witnesses of Alost, like victim and survivor David Van de Steen, even recognized Patrick Haemers as part of the Brabant gang leading the assault on the Delhaize that evening15. It’s also interesting to note that if you’ve read about the Brabant Killers, you know that the little money they made off the raids on the supermarkets was very limited, almost superfluous, not matching the deadly and military approaches the Brabant gang employed. Haemers and his crew were making far more money robbing money transports than the average Brabant hit. Another indicator, in my opinion, that there could not have been a monetary incentive behind the Brabant Killers operation.
Before going back to the case at hand here, we need to have a deeper look at Patrick Haemers and his activities in the 1980s, in order to fully grasp who is it exactly that we’re talking about, and how it will link back to this case later on.
The aftermath of the attack on the money transport in Verviers, November 5th 1985
The Haemers gang16 kept growing in the following years, with Thierry Smars being pushed aside before he died in a suspicious suicide. They were part of the Brussels criminal milieu, meeting at shady spots like the Jonathan17, where that picture of Tuna Israel was taken. Haemers would gain even more notoriety with his final hit. On a January evening in 1989, former Belgian Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boyenants18 suddenly disappeared. He’s been kidnapped! All that remains in front of his garage is his smoking pipe, his hearing aid and one of his shoes19. A few days later, newspaper offices across Belgium start receiving written letters from an obscure organisation called Brigades Socialistes Révolutionnaires, or Revolutionary Socialist Brigades in English. No one has ever heard of them before, they seem like a parody of the CCC20. Not to mention their name spells BSR in French, as if poking fun of the gendarmerie’s BSR unit, the Brigade Spéciale de Recherche. They want a ransom for Vanden Boyenants or else he’s not making it out alive. It quickly appeared the BSR was nothing but a fake pseudonym used by Haemers and his gang. The cops made Haemers the number one suspect in the case after the ransom was paid and the money was found on one of Haemers’s associates, Basri Bajrami. Outside of the official investigation, there are reasons to believe the whole kidnapping was planned in advance by VDB and that he used Haemers to execute his plans.
The kidnapping happened right as VDB was about to find out if he was going to face justice again for a massive bribery scandal involving him, then Defense Minister, the Belgian army, and Roger Boas’s ASCO21. Boas was an arms trafficker22 who had close ties to the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency23. With Paul Vanden Boyenants, they were the financiers of a gun magazine called AMI, later renamed Fire!24, a favorite of many people gravitating around the Brabant Killers case and the practical shooting scene. Boas was also the lover of Fortunato Israel, the madame I talked about earlier25. In 1979, through VDB, ASCO had gained a contract worth 600 million of today’s euros to provide 1000 armed tanks to the Belgian army. It was established Roger Boas had bribed Paul Vanden Boyenants to acquire the contract. VDB had managed to avoid prosecution, but Boas was condemned in 1992, and went through 15 months of a suspended prison sentence, before being rehabilitated in 1995. He was even a recipient of the Leopold II Order in 2004. VDB avoided a prison sentence but his hearing in front of the House Prosecution Committee, which happened right as he was kidnapped, was suspended because he “could be dead at this moment”. After VDB was released from his captors, just a month later, there was never any follow up to this procedure. The man designated by the Vanden Boyenants family to bring the ransom money to Geneva, Switzerland, was Jean Nathan26, a Kippur War veteran and Mossad asset. Nathan later told journalist Dirk Leestmans that the ransom money for VDB was provided by “Israeli relations” of his, in exchange for “services rendered to the nation of Israel” by VDB, as a politician.
Allow me to get lighter for a second. The day after Vanden Boyenants was freed, he gave a press conference that quickly became infamous in Belgium for just how funnily eerie and weird it is. The tone employed, the way VDB addressed himself in the third person, his recollection of events with weird details… If you can understand French, it’s a must watch :
Here’s a few excerpts :
I lived in briefs and in a shirt!
They took my tobacco pipe away.
WHO kidnapped me ? If only I knew…
VDB, you’re not going to die here!
I was a victim of the VDB myth. They wanted VDB’s fortune.
[Talking to his captors] I’d like to know by which right you’re allowing yourself to be familiar with me.
[The place I was held at] was further than the north [of France], or if I was in the north, it was pretty far away.
An audio engineer of the press conference, Paul Delnoy, had the bright idea of gathering the sound from it and decided to fuck with it, recording samples over a simple new beat song. It was released under the name Qui..? (Who..?) by Brussels Sound Revolution (playing on the fake name used by Haemers and his gang, Brigades Socialistes Révolutionnaires) and immediately became the number 1 song in Belgium, selling more than 50.000 copies.
After this break and before going back to the case we’re interested in, it’s important to note that Haemers and especially his dad, Achille Haemers, were actually close to the Brussels milieu VDB operated in - the “VDB Connection”, as it was called. Patrick Haemers’s career as a gangster started out as an errand boy for them, delivering dirty cash in Switzerland for the Caisse Privée bank, close to VDB and the Christian Democrats. That’s why it doesn’t really make sense for Haemers to kidnap VDB on his own accord, for monetary reasons, and under the name of a socialist group - he didn’t have any politics, he was a gangster, and one of great use to VDB and his associates, whom he was close to.
After VDB was freed, Haemers became the number one suspect in the kidnapping and immediately went on the run and hid away in Brazil before being snitched on by his dad (Achille) and brother (Éric), who worked as police informants27. During this infiltration, through these informants, the gendarmes learned that behind the gang was “the organisation", a very powerful one, which Patrick Haemers declared to be full of "raging madmen", and that it included in its ranks politicians, lawyers, and doctors. The person who served as a link between this organization and the Haemers gang was Michel Vander Elst, one of Haemers’s lawyers. Curiously enough, Vander Elst was a close friend of another man named Michel, a certain… Michel Nihoul. Nihoul himself was pretty close with the PSC and Vanden Boyenants. Vander Elst would later appear in the Dutroux affair in 1996 as the man who gave a false alibi to cover for Nihoul on the day of the disappearance of Laetitia Delhez… Could these people be part of the “organisation” Haemers was referring to?
The infiltration of the Haemers family’s inner circles led to a 85-page report named “VDBJ”28, made by the two gendarmes working the case. In it, they report about Vanden Boyenants being part of this “organisation”, and that the kidnapping was staged, with their help and Haemers. Quotes from the report :
Patrick allegedly told Achille that he worked for an "organization" and that his services were well paid. The "organisation" took care of renting apartments, and they [the Haemers gang] didn't have to worry about anything. This organization would be composed of prominent people and would have a doctor and a lawyer. They had dangerous political ideas, and Patrick described them as "dangerous lunatics". Patrick himself didn't get involved in politics, "only money matters”. […] According to the informant, VDB also has ties to the organization, and his kidnapping could have been staged. In any case, VDB maintains good relations with his captors.
[…] X18 [Eric Haemers] confirms the existence of the organisation for which Patrick Haemers allegedly works for and tells us about a doctor who allegedly plays a major role in the organisation. Eric Haemers is said to know a lot more about the organization, but he is afraid to speak out.
[…] For eight years, Achille Haemers was an active member of the [Freemason] lodge. After the robbery in Deerlijk, he was put into "sleep" and had to surrender his glove and deposit. At that time, Eric Haemers also became a member of the lodge.
VDB’s lawyers, Jean Paul Dumont and Martial Lancaster (who would also both serve as Michel Nihoul and Madani Bouhouche’s lawyers29) were alleged to have been in contact with Achille Haemers, to tell him about how it was imperative that his son does not have a direct confrontation with VDB, and that he should not be extradited back to Belgium after he was arrested in Brazil. Was Haemers being entrapped by the organisation and VDB after he had served his role? Was he being made a patsy? One of the two gendarmes working the Haemers family informants later told journalist Douglas De Coninck30 that he was under the impression that, for the good of certain Belgian political and judicial circles, Haemers should not have been extradited.
Patrick Haemers and his wife Denise Tyack upon their arrest in Brazil
Finally, inside the VDBJ report, we find out that Thierry Smars of the Haemers gang had been contacted by a man who presented himself as a French secret service agent, Roland Bastiani, but who was in fact, Elio Ciolini31. He was supposedly the man who received the money made from the robberies by the gang. Ciolini is a well known character of the Years of Lead in Italy, instigating fake leads after Bologna’s train station attack in 1980. He’s also linked to the P2 lodge32, as well as various intelligence agencies. What interest did he have in the Haemers gang? It’s suspicious that in the context of the Belgian 80s and the Brabant Killers, a man like Ciolini appears. Could it be that the Brabant Killers weren’t the only gang used for purposes beyond robberies? If you consider the CCC, the Haemers gang, and the Brabant Killers as different versions (with different goals, perhaps) of the same method - the strategy of tension, we might have a better understanding of the 1980s in Belgium as les années de plombs, the Years of Lead.
Haemers was finally extradited from Brazil to Belgium in 1990. He was considered a suspect in the Brabant Killers, and made declarations about revealing “all that he knew”. That is before he died in his cell, on May 14th 1993, at the dawn of his trial. He hanged himself. Jean-Paul Dumont, his lawyer, will say that his suicide could have been "provoked" : Haemers was on Rohypnol, and if his treatment was abruptly interrupted, he would have had a lot of difficulty dealing with the withdrawing, and it could have led to his suicide.
All of this now leads us back to where we were, with gendarme Marc Toussaint and his investigation. Patrick Haemers’s widow, Denise Tyack, a former French prostitute, was now dating Roland Potier, a petty criminal. Mailleux tells Toussaint about the parties held at the Malou, that in 1994 a fetish party was supposed to be held for New Year's Eve but it was canceled last minute by local authorities, and so it had to be moved somewhere else. But other parties followed, and the vibe was always mysterious, à la Eyes Wide Shut, with every attendee wearing a mask or a hood, with leather clothing, and all of them were bourgeois or from noble families, judging from the cars parked out front.
We’re now in June 1995. Toussaint has been interviewing some of the girls hired by Farid who was running the Malou with Delhuvenne. Despite it only really making money during the summer, the place was always hiring new girls : it was a cover for the pimping activities of Farid, who was always seen driving expensive cars and spending absurd amounts of money. He provided the women, and Delhuvenne provided the clients, old wealthy men with a taste for BDSM. Besides Bernadette and Sonia, another girl, Isabelle, stepped up and accused Farid of being a pimp. She said he had tried to make her boyfriend get into his scheme and make money off her, and that even if she filed a complaint against him, he was backed by the local police and “untouchable”. Farid was a close friend of the Forest (Brussels) police commissioner. He also used fake names and adresses to cover his tracks. Isabelle had learned of Farid through his former girlfriend, Nathalie. Both girls spoke of sex parties at the Malou. Nathalie talks about a BDSM event where she gave out drinks as a waitress :
All these people were dressed in leather and latex. […] I saw strange things during that evening. I saw women flirting with several different men. I saw women tied to columns and men walking past to hit them, kiss them.
She does mention the NYE party of 1994, which was finally held in a warehouse in Schaerbeek (Brussels). There are many other parties she mentions, like this shiny science fiction “Star-Trek” themed party… These are all organised by Farid and another man named Guy, they’re all focused on BDSM, they have the same wealthy and 30 to 50 years old attendees, and they wear masks that they never remove.
So far, it looks like Toussaint has stumbled upon the private sex parties of the local bourgeoisie. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these, nothing illegal, but things definitely get weird when a pimp is involved with bringing in young fresh women. The place where these are held, the Malou, is also a curious choice. But this is only the beginning. The next part of this story gets a bit tangled, so pay attention.
Toussaint meets a former girl of Farid on the tip of a colleague. Also named Nathalie, Nathalie V. was friends with three girls who worked at a bar in Affligem (Brussels). Bea, Soria, and Deborah were all waitresses at the Bubbles Bar, ran by… Farid. Nathalie V. starts working there. The clients of this special bar were “stimulated” with massages by the waitresses while they have their drinks. Farid tells Nathalie V. that he’s looking for women to work in a new facility, that he’s already got 3 others on board. It’s run by a woman named Chantal, her friend Soria has worked for her before. Who’s that woman, Chantal? Chantal Roefs is a madame, who had been to prison for pimping. She’s close to the Fortunato-Montaricourt network. She also owns her own tanning salon operation and runs an escort-girls network. Soria, interrogated by Toussaint, says that Chantal works closely with Farid, who has girls working for both of them in Germany, and they also both drug their own prostitutes to force them to work. He also would provide her regularly with new girls, for a fee.
Chantal Roefs was the owner of and worked at the Body Sun tanning salon in Brussels, at number 144 in Vleurgat Street. Right next door, at number 142, is the Isis, an establishment also known as the Institut Bizaar, a brothel that she operated as well. Nathalie V. and Soria were asked by Farid if they liked BDSM, and if so, he knew a place where they could work, with Chantal, meaning the Institut Bizaar. Chantal has had troubles because she went to prison for pimping and had a police investigation file opened. The Institut Bizaar had to shut down because she couldn’t run it, meaning that it was officially closed, but behind doors, prostitutes were still provided to the clients. It worked with a catalog system, where the client is provided a girl based on what he chose in the catalog, like a blonde, or a brunette. Soria had previously worked as a brunette for Chantal. Chantal also took pride in the fact that she had provided women for important people like celebrity lawyers or a famous Swedish football player, who played for the Brussels club Anderlecht33.
To sum it up, the Malou was used as a cover for pimping operations and as a place to hold BDSM sex parties. Farid Riffi recruited women to work there and then brought them into prostitution. He used these girls for his own network or for Chantal Roefs's brothel, for a fee. Drugs can be used if necessary, to force the girls to work. The clientele is always wealthy, Brussels’s elite, and sadomasochism is their specialty, Delhuvenne being able to help find this specific clientele. But Soria has one big reveal to make to Toussaint : there’s pedophilia involved with Chantal and Farid’s prostitution rings. She tells the story of how on February 12th 1995, at the Institut Bizaar, she saw a young girl come in, brought by Chantal, for a specific client. He wanted a virgin. Chantal said that she was 18, but in reality, she’s only 14. This young girl, named Cindy, had just ran away from her Italian family in Mons, near Charleroi. She met up with a friend of hers, Isabelle (a different one than the one previously mentioned), who’s 17 and dating a 32 years old drug dealer and former pimp named Carlo, and they decide to all go out at a club in Brussels. At the club, Cindy’s friends talk with a few men, including one named Faysal. He’s Farid errand boy. They have a great time, Cindy drinks alcohol for the first time, they go home. Then next morning, Cindy’s friend tells her that she can make a lot of money if she accepts to have sex with an old man. She’s afraid and only accepts because she thinks Isabelle’s boyfriend might beat them up. After she’s brought to the Bizaar by Isabelle and Carlo, Cindy is brought to a private room by Chantal, where she’s raped by a man in his 50s. That’s when Soria finds her, crying in the hallways of the brothel, and notices immediately that she is obviously a minor. A complaint was never filed, and Cindy simply left the Bizaar completely broken and in tears, not even getting the money she was promised for what she was forced to do. Here’s part of Soria’s testimony about Cindy :
[…] Around mid-February, I was working at the Institut Bizaar with my friend Mee-Ai. There, we met a young girl I had never seen before. Her name was Cindy. Chantal brought her to Barbara. Chantal told Barbara that she had a client for Cindy. […] She said she was a virgin and that was what the client was looking for. Barbara said she looked young, but Chantal said she had just turned eighteen. […] Chantal replied that he was paying 120,000 francs and that she was giving Cindy 20,000 francs (respectively 3000 and 500 of today’s euros). […] I know that the client “consumed” her right there. I also saw the client, he was a big, ugly old man. The girl left crying. […] I was moved to see her leave in that state. She kept crying. I tried to comfort her, but she kept sobbing. A week later, I talked to Barbara about it, and she told me that Chantal was crazy, that the girl from last week wasn't eighteen […] but was actually fourteen. […] I was disgusted.
At the end of August 1995, Toussaint and his team find Cindy and bring her in for questioning. She accepts, telling Toussaint that everything Soria told them was true. Her friends are also interrogated, and it’s established that they knew Faysal, Farid’s sidekick. Toussaint establishes a list of the people involved with the Bizaar : there’s Barbara and Raphaelle, two prostitutes who are the “new owners” of the Bizaar after it was forced to close down, they’re subletting it and running it for Chantal Roefs because she legally can’t anymore. They say that Chantal is now back to being a prostitute herself, broke, operating in the Bizaar and a nearby bar called L’Excellence where Farid is often seen hanging out. Her boyfriend is a man named Alain Rekk, director of a garage called Radar, a mysterious company that pops up in the Dutroux-Nihoul affair34. He’s close with Roland Potier, the small time criminal dating Patrick Haemer’s widow, Denise Tyack. Cindy’s friend, Isabelle, says that Chantal was the one who gave her the money when she brought the girl to the Bizaar. She also mentions that her boyfriend Carlo, the pimp, wanted to force her to do it, having asked her to do it before, but then decided that bringing in Cindy instead would solve their problem. Isabelle also identifies the 50 years old man she saw get in and who she’s certain has raped Cindy : it’s Étienne Delhuvenne, judging from pictures she’s shown from Toussaint’s file on the Malou.
Based upon the information given to him by Cindy and Isabelle, Toussaint proceeds with the arrestation of Étienne Delhuvenne. Living with his old mother, Delhuvenne reads the arrest warrant outloud to her :
Look at this mom, it’s [Judge] Damien who signed the warrant. And we went out to eat with him, again, that one day…
This mysterious sentence is clearly a hint for the gendarmes proceeding with the arrest that Delhuvenne is very familiar with the judge who ordered his arrest. Such a statement could often be used to dismiss a judge on grounds of legitimate suspicion, but nothing of that sort happens, evidently... At the gendarmerie station, a colleague of Toussaint seems awfully familiar with Delhuvenne too, almost joking with him while everyone else is silent :
And so, Mr. Delhuvenne, having troubles with Bernadette Lepièce ?
He’s obviously referring to the woman who was denouncing Farid and Delhuvenne, though she has nothing to do with the specific case Delhuvenne was brought in for… Very curious indeed. Chantal Roefs denies knowing Delhuvenne but Cindy recognizes him as her rapist and Isabelle is certain to have seen Chantal bring the girl to her room. She also says that Delhuvenne is the man who paid Chantal and went to Cindy’s room. Soria recognizes him as well. After this identification session, Delhuvenne takes one last look at Toussaint and says :
I don't know what's going on, but believe me, Mr. Toussaint, as soon as I leave the judge's office, I'll find you again.
A clear warning. It seems that Mr. Delhuvenne has a lot of friends in the police and among judges.
So, the Institut Bizaar is implicated in pedophilia through at least one case, with this 14 years old girl, Cindy. Étienne Delhuvenne paid 120,000 Belgian francs (3,000 euros) to rape her, he wanted a virgin. Since the brothel was working through a catalog, we can suppose that minors might be part of their catalog, and so this is not an isolated case35. Chantal Roefs, friend of Delhuvenne and owner of the Bizaar, handled the money and promised him a virgin, bringing in a minor through her network. Carlo, who knows Faysal, who is none other than Farid's errand boy, first suggested that his girlfriend Isabelle should be used by Delhuvenne, but she refuses, resulting in Cindy being forced instead. Cindy is taken to Brussels and the Institut Bizaar by her friends, and is then raped and abused by Delhuvenne, Patrick Haemers' former lawyer, who is associated with Farid in a prostitution and BDSM sex party network for the elite of Brussels and Belgium. It is clear now that we are dealing with an organized child abuse network, on top of a prostitution network.
At the end of August 1995, Toussaint is surprisingly sidelined and removed from the case, his superior assigning him to administrative tasks. Did he do something wrong? Was it because he looked too deep into this and strings were pulled to sabotage him? The gendarme taking over the case is a "pedophile case specialist" : it couldn’t be further from the truth, the gendarme is simply following orders and showing absolutely no signs of critical thinking. Toussaint continues to consult the Institut Bizaar file in secret, thanks to his colleagues sharing it with him, and he becomes aware of serious dysfunctions that simply cannot be errors, according to him.
The last important inquiry requested by the investigating judge Vandermeesch working the case was to identify incoming and outgoing telephone calls to the numbers of the Bizaar, the Body Sun, and Chantal Roefs’ phones. The slang casually used for this act by the Belgian gendarmerie at that time period was “to establish a zoller”. Quickly, Toussaint noticed something weird : in his request, the investigating judge specifies incoming and outgoing calls coming ONLY from “Zone 02” (Brussels). Cindy comes from Mons, Carlo lives in Morlanwelz, Delhuvenne has a second home in the Namur region, etc. Obviously, you have to look everywhere if you're trying to establish links between the perpetrators and the victim, since many of the people in the case live outside the Brussels area. There was an "order" made followed by a "delivery" in the case of the rape of a young girl in a prostitution ring. There’s a chain of events and people. There are therefore people involved outside Brussels.
Another disturbing detail is the length of time it took to analyze the information contained in this zoller : the inquiry was requested on September 21, 1995, and on October 9, three weeks later, Belgacom36 provided the telephone information. These results were given to the head of the investigation at the Uccle gendarmerie brigade. There were 65 pages to analyze, and these analyses would take until… May 17, 1996. That’s 8 months later. What would the conclusion of the report be after the investigation into the zoller by the gendarmerie?
We are working on identifying the telephone numbers. We have found no usable clues.
Toussaint is infuriated. 8 months to read a 65 pages report and no one has taken the time. If they had, they would have noticed that more than 800 (!) telephone numbers were clearly identified, with some belonging to official Belgian institutions, like
The Ministry of National Defense
The Ministry of the Interior
The Ministry of Finance
The Ministry of the Brussels-Capital Region
The Ministry of the Flemish Community
The Municipal Administration of Molenbeek (Brussels)
The European Affairs Commission
The Embassy of the United States
The Embassy of Morocco
The Embassy of San Marino
The Brussels Gendarmerie
The Brussels Judiciary Police
Several doctors, lawyers, a journalist
RTBF (Belgian public broadcast television)
SNCB (Belgian national railway company)
This alone is enough to make you stop and wonder what could possibly have been the communications made between some of these and a brothel ran by Chantal Roefs. But it gets weirder. Some very worrying child services were also in contact with the Bizaar :
The Association of Parents for the Development of Autistic People (APEPA)
The Office of Birth and Childhood (ONE)
The Federation of Catholic Scouts (FSC)
Administration of Physical Education, Sport and Outdoor Life, under the Ministry of Culture and Social Affairs (ADEPS)
Brussels Municipal Council Youth and Family
IRSA (Royal Institute for the Deaf and Blind) – IMP Prince of Orange
These are mostly organizations that help children and young people, sometimes psychologically or physically weak – it's shocking to see them on a list of incoming and outgoing calls to and from a brothel specializing in BDSM where a child was raped. These organizations may not be connected, it might only be their employees who called or were called, but it's still extremely disturbing and should certainly not lead to establishing that there’s "no usable clues”. And these are all only coming from a small, defined Brussels area… Delhuvenne's statement about the judge and to Toussaint upon his arrest, Toussaint’s removal from the case, the restriction of the phone numbers investigation to the Brussels area, the lack of investigations into the organizations found in the zoller, the 8 months of analysis to reach the conclusion "no usable evidence”… It seemed clear to Toussaint that something was off. The Dutroux affair hadn’t happened yet, we’re still in 1995, but the gendarmerie was already moving in the shadows with the Othello operation in Charleroi. We know that the gendarmerie wanted to be solo on the Dutroux case, saying they wanted to bring down a larger network. Is that why they weren’t communicating anything with the Institut Bizaar ? Toussaint was also reminded of a similar case to this one, the CRIES scandal. It is pretty unknown outside of Belgium and it’s absolutely massive, in every way. Let’s take the time to establish the facts. The acts described in the next three paragraphs are particularly graphic and disgusting, even when just sticking to the facts, and if you wish to, you could skip them entirely without it impacting your reading of this piece at all.
CRIES stands for Center for Research and Information on Childhood and Sexuality (in English) and was founded in 1987, in Belgium. Its founder, Philippe Carpentier, intended to help pedophiles fight their pedophilia. Carpentier had formerly worked as a translator at a police station. But as it turned out, CRIES was in fact an international CSAM distribution network and child prostitution organization37. The CRIES edited a pedophile magazine called L’Espoir (Hope) and it is what led the police towards it. They staked out the entry door of the CRIES and noticed that a condemned pedophile registered in their files was seen entering the premises. After an investigation, 16 different searches were organized in and around the CRIES. 15 people were arrested and a listing of more than 400 clients of the CRIES was acquired. It was filled with adresses of pedophiles and pro-pedophile organisations all around the world. More than 20.000 pictures of children as young as a few months old were seized. Only 20 children were identified in the pictures.
One member of the CRIES, Michel Felu, worked at UNICEF in Brussels, as a sort of “handyman”. He sometimes spent his nights down in the basement of the international organisation. It’s like he lived there. The police searched it and found out that the basement had been used for CSAM38 photo shoots. There was a whole photo development laboratory, a catalogue made from CSAM pictures, as well as a computer full of adresses of children to be sent to pedophiles. Felu was supposedly bringing in children and gaining the trust of their parents by pretending to be giving out computer science lessons in his basement. Others were arrested, like an employee of the Minister of Justice, or a couple who “rented” their handicapped child to members of the CRIES. Another person arrested was Olivier Ralet, a school teacher who had written about arms trafficking as well as Wackenhut and the far right in Belgium39. Ralet photographed minors for the CRIES. In total, 14 people were sentenced to prison, with sentences ranging from 3 to 10 years.
The CRIES network was like an octopus, making its way to the Netherlands, Italy, France, the USA, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and more. 280 members were identified by the Belgian police in foreign countries. But all they could do was share the information with the foreign police services, and so most got away with it.
In January of 1996, Toussaint learns of new developments with Cindy and her family.
We learned that the mother and her daughter [Cindy] no longer reside at home. They are staying at the maternal home in Cuesmes. Cindy's father could no longer bear the tension surrounding his daughter, the threats weighing on her and her family. The parents therefore decided to break up following this very unstable climate.
No follow up was given to this police report besides the fact that tension and threats are mentioned. From whom and why? The gendarmerie doesn’t care to know. At the same time period, Soria and Isabelle stop their collaboration with the gendarmes for the same reason : they’re being threatened. What’s even worse is that later on, in March 1999, in the Étienne Delhuvenne trial for the rape of Cindy, Isabelle will completely disavow her statement about him. She is made to write a 5 pages letter in Delhuvenne’s own lawyer’s office, in his home, and the draft is even found there, in the bin. Bit of an unusual, highly personal and stressful environment to make someone write a letter in. In this letter, she says that the investigators “forced her to testify”, that she was ordered to “sign a statement previously written by the gendarmes and Toussaint”, that she was forced to “recognize Delhuvenne” because a gendarme told her to “look carefully at this picture, because it is him that you will have to recognize, wearing the number 6", and that this whole case was a setup, that she would have been beaten if she had not cooperated with the gendarmes. Upon reading her letter at the trial, here’s what the judge had to say to Isabelle :
Do you realize the seriousness of your remarks? […] You wrote this letter without even speaking to your lawyer. There’s only two possible explanations. Either, as you say, the police forced you. Or it was someone else. Are you afraid of someone?
Isabelle stands by her letter. Chantal Roefs agrees with Isabelle on what she said, it was a setup by Carlo (out of all people) and Bernadette Lepièce, Delhuvenne's former girlfriend. The tribunal’s presiding judge also had something to say about the letter, to Delhuvenne :
Don't you think it's a strange for a lawyer to have a letter of withdrawal written at his own home?
Delhuvenne says he had it written while he was still in jail but he’s lying in a very obvious way, the dates don’t correspond at all.
Cindy doesn’t even show up at the trial. The prosecution's representative considers that the charges are not strong enough to charge Delhuvenne with rape of a minor without Isabelle's testimony, and so, he’s acquitted. But Chantal Roefs and Delhuvenne still remained charged for their involvement in pimping, Delhuvenne receiving a three-year suspended prison sentence40 for it. He appealed, his sentence increasing to three years in prison in 2000. He did not appear at his appeal trial, he opposed it, and dragged out the proceedings until the statute of limitations expired and his sentence was therefore overturned. He was a free man.
I think it’s fair to say the investigation was sabotaged. Same for the trial. Étienne Delhuvenne was prosecuted again in 2003 (forgery in connection with trafficking in CSAM video tapes) and in 2007 (malfeasance in connection with the management of retirement homes) but he remained free, and was never even bothered. We will get back to those CSAM VHS tapes shortly…
We understand now that the Institut Bizaar was a brothel working as a coverup for a prostitution network involved in pedophilia. We have established that it reached to people like Étienne Delhuvenne, a man close to the Haemers gang and the VDB Connection. We know that Patrick Haemers and his dad, Achille Haemers were definitely involved in criminal activities throughout the 80s. But it won’t be until 1996 and the beginning of the Dutroux affair that we’ll hear about Achille Haemers’s involvement with prostitution and… child trafficking.
Part two here