BELGIUM: The second survivor of Marc Dutroux's dungeon told his trial yesterday how the child rapist took pleasure in hurting her after kidnapping her at the age of 14.
Facing her tormentor for the first time, more than seven years after her rescue by police, Ms Laetitia Delhez said Dutroux had chained her to a bed and raped her repeatedly.
"During the first days, he raped me," Ms Delhez (22) told the court in Arlon. "He would ask [if it hurt] while smiling, as if it made him laugh." Dutroux later forced her into the small makeshift cell in the basement of his house where he had already kept Sabine Dardenne, the only other survivor, locked up for nearly three months, she said.
"I realise the harm that I caused," Dutroux later said from the dock where he sat behind bullet-proof glass.
"His excuses. . . he can die with them," exclaimed Ms Dardenne, sitting next to her lawyer.
Ms Delhez was kidnapped on August 9th, 1996 as she left a public swimming pool in her home town of Bertrix.
She was Dutroux's last victim and her time in the cramped, damp cell with Ms Dardenne lasted about a week.
Investigators were able to quickly identify the white van Dutroux used to kidnap her. After arresting him and other suspects, they persuaded him to lead them to his house in a Charleroi suburb where he had imprisoned the two girls. Ms Delhez and Ms Dardenne, who gave her testimony on Monday, are the lucky ones found still alive. Four other kidnapped girls - two of them as young as eight - had been killed months earlier.
The grandparents of one of the dead girls sat in the public gallery to give moral support to Ms Delhez, who spoke in an assured voice throughout her testimony.
The trial continues.