This story from 1996 adds some validity to these documents, these things don't just fade away.

King Forced to Step In / Pedophile Scandal Just One of Many : Belgium's Confidence Crisis Is Deepening

By Barry James, International Herald Tribune

Sept. 12, 1996

CHARLEROI, Belgium— As law-enforcement teams move deeper into what appears to be a network of pedophiles, prostitution traffickers and car thieves based around this decaying city, fresh evidence is emerging of a substantially broader crisis in Belgian society. Many Belgians now wonder if an undercurrent of mafia-style criminality and corruption has been governing their society.

Daily revelations have led to a steep fall in public confidence in national institutions, prompting King Albert II to make a virtually unheard-of foray into politics to demand an accounting. And mistrust between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemings has increased.

In a poll following a television debate in which journalists questioned the police and magistrates, little more than one percent said they had any confidence in Belgian justice. Even a public prosecutor, Guy Poncelet, expressed disgust at the "immobility and the inhuman character" of the judicial system after his son, a police inspector who he said had "sensitive" information, was assassinated a few months ago.

The first blow to the public was the news of a pedophile and prostitution ring last month and the discovery of the bodies of four girls who were allegedly kidnapped and murdered by Marc Dutroux, the gang's leader. The resulting investigation has not only yielded evidence of incompetence and indifference by the police and magistrates but also shed light on a whole range of other criminal activities, including the murder of a former Socialist deputy prime minister, Andre Cools, five years ago.

For the last week, the king has been meeting with the parents of missing, kidnapped and murdered children. Some originally did not want to see him, so great was their disgust at the indifference with which authorities had dealt with their anguish.

Thanks for reading The Times. Subscribe to The Times The father of young An Marchal, one of Mr. Dutroux's victims, expressed the prevailing sense of anger and helplessness at her funeral in the cathedral of Hasselt on Saturday. Paul Marchal refused to allow government representatives to sit near the coffin, saying "You abandoned us."

So low have national institutions fallen in public esteem — Cardinal Godfried Daneels acknowledged last week that the Roman Catholic Church has a pedophile problem — that the monarchy was one of the few voices that could speak with any hope of being heard, according to political sources.

The king said he would pursue "total clarity on this drama, its origins and all its ramifications." He said he would set up a forum, involving both the parents and officials, to combat pedophilia and child prostitution. And he promised to do everything possible to make Belgian justice "more human and efficient."

The police have so far dug up the bodies of four girls from properties owned by Mr. Dutroux, a convicted child rapist. But at least eight children still are missing. And on the videotapes of sexual abuse and torture found during the searches, investigators reportedly have seen 12 children as yet unidentified, according to the newspaper Le Soir.

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5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Brahms Continue reading the main story A major criminal investigation has focused on the southern Walloon rust belt, and notably on its principal cities of Liege and Charleroi, a grimy place of tangled streets and defunct factories that merges into an area of small farms, warehouses and scrap yards where Mr. Dutroux and his associates operated.

Police officers raided their colleagues in Charleroi this week, trucking away boxloads of files and questioning several officers about allegations of an official cover-up of criminal activities.

Helped by the huge influx of Italian workers into the coal mines and steel mills of the southern, French-speaking Wallonia region in the 1950s, Belgium has become an important outpost for the Mafia, officials say.

Members of the Italian criminal organization have officially been implicated in the 1991 killing of Mr. Cools, who apparently knew too much about criminal financing of the Walloon Socialist party, of which he was a prominent leader.

The newspaper De Standaard described the party — which controls a web of businesses, banks, insurance companies and town halls — as "a corrupt political apparatus, partly infiltrated by mafiosi." Some newspaper reports, citing judicial sources, say the party received money from a suspect in the Dutroux investigation, Jean-Michel Nihoul, a Brussels businessman.

Mr. Nihoul's unshaven features on a police mug-shot belie his reputation as a smooth-talking, expensively dressed dandy who cultivated political relationships. Justice sources have told newspapers that he is being questioned about possible links between Mr. Dutroux's commerce in pedophilia and prostitution, the organized crime milieu of Charleroi and political and financial circles in Brussels.

Although there is no clear connection between the Dutroux case and the Cools shooting, the police investigation in Wallonia has produced a sudden breakthrough in the politician's murder.

Six suspects have been arrested, including a former government minister, Alain Van der Biest, who was a Socialist Party associate of Mr. Cools and a fellow Freemason. The police also recovered the murder weapon from a canal after one of the suspects told them where to look.

It was the latest twist in a complex chain of events mingling crime and political corruption.

Random murders in supermarket parking lots in the late 1980s, widely seen as an attempt to destabilize the state, still have no explanation. Financial scandals have become commonplace. A storm over kickbacks on defense contracts involved the suicide of a general and the resignation of the NATO secretary-general. More recently, there has been a string of attacks on armored cash trucks by criminals armed with bazookas and battering rams.

Belgium's forces of law and order have sunk in public esteem since it is clear that had they been better organized and coordinated they would have caught on to the activities of Mr. Dutroux much earlier than they did and perhaps, the parents say, have saved the lives of their children.

Belgians commonly believe that Mr. Dutroux had powerful protectors. How else, they ask, was he able to be released in the early stages of a 13 1/2-year sentence for the savage rape of a half-dozen young girls, despite appeals by his mother and sister to keep him in jail.

"Something stinks in this release," Jean-Pierre Dewaele, a retired prison psychiatrist, told the magazine Humo. "Either there was an accumulation of mistakes and the system failed in every respect or there must have been bizarre interference."

The minister of the interior at the time, who signed the forms for Mr. Dutroux's parole, Melchior Wathelet, now a judge in the European Court of Justice, was notoriously stingy with parole requests. Yet, there is no indication that the police or social services investigated Mr. Dutroux's background before his release. No one questioned why, despite being fresh out of prison, unemployed and receiving welfare benefits, he was able to tender 2.5 million Belgian francs (about $80,000) for a house and plot of land.

Mr. Marchal said to extended applause during his daughter's funeral that she might not have died had the energetic judge in the Dutroux case, Jean-Marc Connerotte, been allowed to start his investigation earlier.

Reacting to what were described as specific death threats, authorities have thrown an unprecedented security shield around Mr. Connerotte and the public prosecutor, Michel Bourlet. The two men were the center of an enormous controversy a couple of years ago when they were summarily removed from the investigation of the Cools murder for what were believed to be political reasons.

In a letter of protest at the time, Mr. Connerotte said he already had all the elements needed to solve the case.

The funerals for the four young victims attributed to Mr. Dutroux have united the nation in grief and anger. But this has not filled a political vacuum at Belgium's heart. In a recent article titled "Belgium Requiem?" Le Soir said the continuing friction between the two main language groups threatens the survival of the federal state established in 1992 with separate administrations for Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels.

Last week, four French-speaking professors at the University of Louvain issued a manifesto suggesting that if Flemings persisted in calls for greater autonomy, Wallonia and Brussels should establish a separate state, dubbed "Wallobrux." The idea was quickly taken up by Philippe Busquin, head of the Walloon Socialists, who denounced "egoistic and destructive calls" for Flemish autonomy.

The Flemings are haunted by the prospect of a Wallobrux union, which, if it came to pass, would deprive them of the Dutch-language belt between the bilingual capital and Wallonia.

Already they are concerned at the erosion of their language in six suburbs south of Brussels where French speakers have been allowed to deal with the administration in their own language. But French is taking over as people from the capital move increasingly into the area.

Equally, Walloons are concerned by Flemish militancy, illustrated by the violent incursion of uniformed neofascists during a folk rally at the Flemish shrine of Dixmude last month.

Analysts say that tensions between the two communities seem likely to worsen with the approach of constitutional talks in 1999.

As in many failing marriages, money is at the root of the bad blood between the 6 million Flemings and 3 million Walloons, to whom are added a million foreigners as presumed French-speakers.

The Flemings complain that they bear the brunt of Belgium's vast financial and social security deficits.

They cite the fact that Mr. Dutroux and his wife, who owned at least seven homes, were living on welfare benefits as an example of the way Wallonia supposedly abuses the social security system.

Claude Eerdekens, a leading Walloon Socialist politician, assailed Flemish politicians who, he said, describe the Walloons as "profiteers and people who are milking the Flemish cow."

"Can you realize how painful and humiliating and insulting this is?" he asked.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/12/news/king-forced-to-step-in-pedophile-scandal-just-one-of-many-belgiums.html