The great public trauma that has engulfed Belgium over the paedophile scandals reached a major turning point yesterday with the publication of the Dutroux Commission report from a high powered group of MPs. It is a comprehensive examination of the issues involved, containing a damning indictment of the failures by police authorities and public administration to come properly to grips with them. Their complacency, arrogance, competing jurisdictions sheer incompetence and possible but not yet proven protection of suspects have deeply shamed Belgians and convulsed the legal system.
This report spells out these failings and lays out where the blame should be placed on structural factors and individuals. It vindicates parliamentary inquiries and has done much to convince Belgian, citizens that their political system can be used to address the grave shortcomings highlighted in this, report. Its proceedings took up 280 hours of television hearings over the last six months and attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers. The police, officials and victims' families have become household names in Belgium following the moving march last October by some 300,000 people demanding radical reforms. The government undertook to respond, but has delayed initiating major changes until the commission reported. It will be difficult to resist these findings.
The commission wants to see a complete change in treated. The casual way their interests have been disregarded has been breathtakingly arrogant and their dignified campaign has made a deep impression on their fellow citizens. Belgium has been undergoing a profound political transformation in recent years, which raised questions about the sustainability of its national unity as a federal system was introduced to share power more effectively between Flemings and Walloons. The paedophile crisis, which has affected both communities, has tended to hold them together at a time when other forces were pushing them apart.
The commission calls for a complete overhaul of Belgium's police and magistracy services, although it does not recommend that the division between its justice, interior and prosecuting branches be abandoned. The three competing and overlapping police forces emerge as a central theme in the paedophile scandals and are subjected to damning criticism in the report. It calls for a much clearer line of ministerial responsibility for them, integrated nationally, but stills leaving considerable autonomy at communal level. The forces have been poorly paid and endowed and have, notoriously, been allowed to develop as petty bureaucratic fiefdoms under factional political influence.
As for the investigating magistracy, the commission calls for better training and promotion, more resources and a more professional line of seniority and executive command. Above all, this report puts it up to the Belgian government to respond vigorously and effectively in its credibility is to survive: While structural and individual failings are identified in trenchant and convincing fashion, the commission does not presume to cast punitive judgments. Its work, is to continue, notably into what could prove to be the most explosive subject of all, the suspicion that police may have been protecting some of the chief accused.