Belgian Nuns Help Free (Sort Of) A Monster

By Rod Dreher • August 4, 2012, 1:39 AM

George Conger at Get Religion draws attention to a riveting story from Belgium. The wife of the notorious pedophile murderer Marc Dutroux has been released early from prison, and has been taken in by the Poor Clare nuns. Excerpt from the AP account:

The ex-wife of a notorious pedophile who aided her husband’s horrific abuse and murder of young girls – and who let two children starve to death while her husband was in jail – was approved Tuesday for early release from prison, infuriating the victims’ parents and reopening a dark chapter in Belgian history.

Michelle Martin, who is now 52, received a 30-year prison term in 2004 for not freeing girls her then-husband Marc Dutroux held captive behind a secret door in their decrepit, dirty basement in Marcinelle, 40 miles south of Brussels.

Dutroux, 55, is serving a life term for kidnapping, torturing and abusing six girls in 1995 and 1996, and murdering four of them.

During those years, Dutroux also spent four months in jail for theft, leaving it to his wife to feed Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, a pair of friends imprisoned in the basement. Martin let the girls starve to death. They were 8 years old.

I am stunned and disgusted by this. Counting the time she was in jail before her trial, Martin has spent 16 years in prison — this, for helping her husband kidnap little girls he sexually tortured, and herself starving two kidnapped children to death.

If the nuns took her in after she served her full sentence, I would personally find that distasteful, but a profoundly Christian act. Yet this woman has not served her sentence. She killed two children by starving them to death, and yet, she will go free after only 16 years behind bars — apparently because the nuns agreed to receive her.

Those nuns disgust me. Where is their compassion for the dead girls? Where is their compassion for the families of those children who were imprisoned and sexually tortured in Dutroux and Martin’s dungeon? It is an outrage. If you ask me, this woman Martin should spend the rest of her life in prison for what she did. The Belgian system, aided by these nuns, is content to let her spend only 16 years for her homicidal sadism. Let the nuns go visit her in prison, pray with her, visit her, help her repentance. But receive her into the relative freedom of a convent instead of a prison? How is this right? How on earth?

Shame on those nuns. Shame. And shame of the Belgian legal system. Sixteen years for child murder, and then off to a convent. What a perversion of justice! I don’t understand this at all. I’m not at all saying that Martin is beyond redemption. I am only saying that she is a sadist and a child murderer who belongs in jail, not a convent.

Am I missing something here? Or what?

UPDATE: In the comments, several of you are missing my point. I don’t object at all to the nuns receiving a despicable person like Michelle Martin. I know perfectly well, from a theological point of view, why they would do so. I don’t have a problem with that. What I object to is that their willingness to receive her apparently allowed her to be released after serving only 16 years of a 30 year sentence (which was way too light, but whatever) for torturing two children to death.

If they wanted to receive her after she had paid her debt, I wouldn’t have any problem with that. If they wanted to receive her because she was to be released anyway, and had nowhere to go, I wouldn’t have had any problem with that either. It’s the (apparent) fact that they said they were willing to receive her, and that it was that willingness that got her sprung early, that appalls.

UPDATE.2: AFP’s reporting indicates that the Belgian justice system granted the parole because the nuns agreed to take Martin in. Once again, a misplaced sense of religiously motivated compassion for a sexual torturer perverts justice. I’m so tired of this.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Religion, Sex and Sexuality. Tagged Belgium, Catholicism, Marc Dutroux, Michelle Martin, nuns.

80 Responses to Belgian Nuns Help Free (Sort Of) A Monster

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Dave Dutcher says:

August 5, 2012 at 12:16 am

This sort of pathological compassion all over the western church is pushing me towards atheism or at least leaving. If God cares more about some murderous hag, than several raped and murdered girls, than why bother.

He doesn’t care more, but he does care even for them. It’s a tricky thing-the crimes are monstrous and horrify everyone, but because of original sin people have this potential in them, and God desires everyone to repent, not just good people. I so agree with you though, we can’t let a false compassion trivialize crime. Pray for her though, man-it will help you too.

Given that few secular prisons serve the original purpose of the American Reformatory – our alternative to the death sentence and the dungeon, from which the modern prison developed, I would that all convicted criminals could be put in such religious institutions

Oh, God no. Look, I agree with you on the need to know Jesus Christ as Savior, but we cannot force people to accept him like jailers. Nor should our monasteries become cells for people who don’t want to be there.

I can think of no better way to make people hate the Gospel than by having their jailers preach it, and that they cannot escape it. It’s not fair to us, and it’s sure not fair to the secular state to be compelled in this manner to be forced to listen. What if the prisoner is an atheist or muslim, or a sect of christianity that is unpopular?
Rod Dreher says:

August 5, 2012 at 12:34 am

The BBC:

A court in Mons ruled on Tuesday that Martin was eligible for “conditional release” so long as she moved to the Clarisses convent, which had agreed to take her in.

I don’t see why this is so difficult to figure out. The court wasn’t going to let her out unless she found a place to stay. The nuns agreed to take her in. She’s going to get out of prison, and will be able to go out into the community as long as she is under “strict supervision” of the nuns, whatever that means.

I believe the nuns should not have been complicit in this outrageous decision by Belgian judges to let this monstrous child-killer out. It is an outrage all around. I believe God loves Michelle Martin and desires her salvation, but elementary justice has not been served here, either by the courts or by the willingness of the nuns to collaborate in the abridgement of a child-killer’s sentence.
Rod Dreher says:

August 5, 2012 at 1:10 am

Your comments are atrocious, Rod. The power to release the woman or not is solely that of the civil authorities; the fact that the nuns were willing to meet their Christian obligations by taking her in did not compel the authorities to release her. In addition, I think the nuns could well believe that the woman’s soul is better off in their care than in civil incarceration. I don’t want to be harsh, but “these are hard sayings.”

Look, the civil authorities are certainly the most blameworthy here, but what I find most interesting about this case is the role of the nuns. Do you really believe that the nuns had a “Christian obligation” to take Martin in? How do you figure that? Seems to me a Christian has an obligation to try to love even the unlovable. The belief that Christians have an obligation to make possible a killer’s early release from prison is bizarre.

And, I’m quite sure the nuns believe Martin’s soul is better cared for with her in their convent than in jail. But so what? Since when does the state allow members of a religious community to impose their own judgments of conscience on the disposition of a convicted murderer’s punishment? On that principle, should the Belgian judiciary consult religious communities during the sentencing process to see what their views are on how prisoners should be punished?
Rod Dreher says:

August 5, 2012 at 1:26 am

With all respect Rod, Christians aren’t supposed to find “profoundly Christian acts” distasteful — we are supposed to be awed and, if need be, shamed into striving to emulate, if not the acts themselves, the spirit that prompted them.

So? I’m making a statement about my own limitations, admitting that I would personally find those acts distasteful, but concede that they would nevertheless be righteous. Unlike the current situation, in which I find the nuns’ act offensive and unrighteous.

Disgust is not an appropriate response to profoundly Christian acts.

I don’t agree that what the nuns have done in this case is a profoundly Christian act. There is an enormous difference between distaste and disgust.

Still, you have no basis upon which to judge the nuns’ compassion towards the victims and their families that does not proceed from the questionable assumption that the only appropriate means of expressing said compassion is to insist on keeping Martin in prison or otherwise having nothing to do with her until at least 2026 after which their attitude will still be distasteful.

I don’t understand your point. Why can’t someone judge the public acts of these nuns? I believe this woman’s crimes were so heinous that she ought to have been made to serve her entire sentence. She’s getting out early because some nuns agreed to take her in. This woman, Michelle Martin, kept two kidnapped eight year old girls in a dungeon, even though her pedophile husband was in prison; she starved them to death. It is monstrous that the Belgian court gave her only 30 years in prison. It is monstrous that the court is setting her free on supervised release after serving only half her sentence. And it is inexplicable that these nuns abetted the injustice of her early release. I know they don’t see it this way, but to me, it shows contempt for the children she murdered and their families. As I write this, my eight year old son is sleeping in the bed next to me. I could not imagine how I would feel if a court granted early prison release to a woman who starved him to death because a bunch of do-gooder nuns felt sorry for that person, and agreed to give her a place to live, and to be good chaperones when she goes out into the streets to enjoy the freedom to which she is not morally entitled.
Rod Dreher says:

August 5, 2012 at 2:26 am

Anyway, look, instead of expressing outrage that I hold this view of the nuns and their action here, could one or more of you who think the nuns did the right thing explain why you think so?
Andrea says:

August 5, 2012 at 6:22 am

Your response to this is so emotional that I don’t know if you can understand another point of view. Several people, including me, already explained why they believe the nuns are right.

I don’t think justice is necessarily served by considering only outraged parents or their desire for vengeance. I favor punishment AND rehabilitation, justice strongly tempered with mercy. The Belgian system seems to allow for both, under the strict supervision of nuns. I doubt these women like her or will make her stay a cakewalk. Repentance will be strongly encouraged.
Mike says:

August 5, 2012 at 6:50 am

Because it was an act of grace and compassion. That’s what we are all called to do and these nuns have just done it is a more dIfficult way. We are called to help the imprisoned and the sinners. This woman has been punished by the state and will continue to be. But she qualified for parole and the only thing stoppIng it was a placement.

The nuns believe this is part of their calling and that having this woman live with them is an act of mercy and grace that the Bible constantly calls Christians to perform.
James Kabala says:

August 5, 2012 at 10:53 am

As far as I can tell, the available facts are these: The civil authorities wanted to give her parole. This was in no way an initiative of the nuns. BUT – the civil authorities would not have paroled her if she had no place to go. So the nuns did have the choice to decline and let her remain in jail. At least, this is what the available facts seem to imply.
David J. White says:

August 5, 2012 at 10:55 am

Dave Dutcher asks me: What part of “likely not to re-offend” do you see here? She’s not an embezzler or a drunk driver.

No, she was convicted of murdering and abusing children. Since presumably a condition of her parole is that she not have any contact with children, I don’t see how she will be in a position to re-offend. Unless you define “re-offending” as committing any sort of offense, including getting a parking ticket. If that’s what it takes to “re-offend”, then everyone who commits any sort of crime, even once, should be in prison indefinitely. Which isn’t the case.

***

Anglican comments: If God cares more about some murderous hag, than several raped and murdered girls, than why bother.

Christianity in fact calls on us to believe that God cares just as much for “some murderous hag” as for several raped and murdered girls. Yes, this is hard. The Gospels tell us that some who were following Jesus left because His teachings were hard.

I recall that I was once discussing the parable of the Prodigal Son with a friend of mine. I had always felt that the obedient older son got a raw deal from the father. My friend suggested to me that those of us who try to live our faith all too often like to see ourselves as the obedient older son. But the truth is, we are all the Prodigal Son.

It’s easy to take umbrage at the notion that God loves a “murderous hag” as much as He loves the murdered girls. For one thing, we tend to identify with the victims and their families more than with the perpetrator. But to God each of us may appear to have more in common with the murderous hag than with her victims.
scotch meg says:

August 5, 2012 at 11:02 am

Rod, I don’t have an explanation that will satisfy you. I do know that there is no amount of time in jail that will constitute justice for this woman. However, I would recommend reading “Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy” by Rumer Godden for some perspective; also, “Dead Man Walking” (I forget the author’s name). In the end, indignation and wrath punish the one who hangs onto them much more than the one to whom they are directed.
Dave Dutcher says:

August 5, 2012 at 11:28 am

don’t think justice is necessarily served by considering only outraged parents or their desire for vengeance. I favor punishment AND rehabilitation, justice strongly tempered with mercy. The Belgian system seems to allow for both, under the strict supervision of nuns. I doubt these women like her or will make her stay a cakewalk. Repentance will be strongly encouraged.

Actually Rod is right-it seems her parole really only happened because nuns agreed to house her. From the BBC, parole was conditional on a french convent housing her for ten years.

Cynically, it seems like they were “paroling” her out of the country. When that fell through because the Paris government refused, these nuns stepped up, probably completely unaware that of this aspect of it.

Kind of wondering how much of this was truly about repentance or what have you as opposed to some official seizing the chance to get a controversial prisoner out of the country and being stymied when it failed, and forced to honor the parole. Maybe this is my cynicism talking though.
John E_o says:

August 5, 2012 at 11:53 am

Anyway, look, instead of expressing outrage that I hold this view of the nuns and their action here, could one or more of you who think the nuns did the right thing explain why you think so?

Well, I’ll give it a go.

Let me preface this by saying that in a world where I made the rules, this woman would have been hung by the neck until dead at sunrise the day after she was found guilty.

However, that is not the case in Belgium. For whatever reason, they have a system where they give parole to criminals. As part of that process, these folks live in some sort of supervised living arrangement. Apparently, these nunneries are part of that system.

From bits of reporting that has been posted, another nunnery had offered to take her in, but rescinded that offer under pressure. So this was not a new or novel arrangement.

JohnSP has presented credible arguments that by taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights, the woman may have been able to force the Belgian government to release her even if there was no supervised living arrangements.

Now it is possible that the Belgian government might have made some other arrangements, such as building a facility just for her on some government controlled area such as a military base. Maybe not.

But, as I see it, you – Rod – are working under the assumption that if the nuns had not made that offer, then the woman would have remained in prison.

I think JohnSP has made a good argument that this is not, in fact, the case.

So working under the assumption that the woman would have either been released to an unsupervised residential living arrangement or have had a new, untested government created arrangement created for her, I think that the better of the available options was that she be released into the care of the nuns who have a tradition of taking in these sorts of people.
William Dalton says:

August 5, 2012 at 12:30 pm

“Oh, God no. Look, I agree with you on the need to know Jesus Christ as Savior, but we cannot force people to accept him like jailers. Nor should our monasteries become cells for people who don’t want to be there.”

One can’t be forced to accept Jesus Christ, but one can be forced to sit behind bars, constrained of one’s liberty. How is that time better spent – among those who believe and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or those who believe and preach one of the gospels of this (brave new) world? Given that many, even most, of the people who serve a criminal sentence are eventually set free, where would you rather they have schooled for their reentry to our society?

“I can think of no better way to make people hate the Gospel than by having their jailers preach it, and that they cannot escape it. It’s not fair to us, and it’s sure not fair to the secular state to be compelled in this manner to be forced to listen. What if the prisoner is an atheist or muslim, or a sect of christianity that is unpopular?”

I believe the answer to your question was contained in my original post. If they are among the elect chosen to accept God’s grace in Jesus Christ, they will embrace the Gospel, be released from burden of their sin, as well as its control of their lives, and will welcome life in the community of God’s people. If they aren’t among the elect, they will die in their sins and suffer eternal torment for them. If they find life in a Christian environment harder to bear than a maximum security prison, with all of its rapes, psychological tortures and other indignities and depravities, it is no worse than they will endure after death, and will not compound the offense by making the state, and all its citizens, complicit in the crimes that are typical of the secular prison.
Roberto says:

August 5, 2012 at 1:12 pm

I don’t understand your point. Why can’t someone judge the public acts of these nuns?

I don’t want to belabor the point, so let me leave it at this: of course, you can judge their public acts. You and everyone else here has, to some extent, done just that. My point is that you cannot say that the acts proceed from, or are in some of way evidence of, a lack of compassion towards the victims and their families. If that were true than most, if not all, acts of kindness towards prisoners could be deemed as lacking compassion for the victims of their crimes, since virtually every victim wants their perpetrator to suffer to maximum extent allowable by the law, if not more.

Obviously, we disagree, not so much about whether Martin should have been paroled — as I noted elsewhere, based on what I have read, I would have made her serve her entire sentence — but on what the nuns willingness to take her in says about them. Let’s just leave it at that.
Andrea says:

August 5, 2012 at 1:14 pm

I don’t have a problem with their actions even if it does turn out that she would have been forced to stay in prison if the nuns hadn’t offered her a place at the convent. Apparently the Belgian system allows for such an occurrence.

I vaguely remember this case from the 1990s and there seem to have been missed opportunities to rescue these little girls, which probably adds to the outrage. I don’t think anyone is saying it was not a horrific crime, just disagreeing on whether it’s inappropriate to parole her after 16 years to a convent, etc.

Christian theology teaches that all of us are sinners and that God loves the sinner as much as the victim. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of a problem seeing the ordinariness and humanity of people who are capable of this sort of crime. It’s easier to call them “monsters” than to acknowledge that they are very human.

To my mind, it takes nothing away from the horror of the crime or the sorrow over the girls’ deaths to also acknowledge that there may be something to be salvaged in the woman who helped cause them or admire nuns who are willing to take on the task of helping the woman try to rebuild some semblance of a life and care for the state of her soul. I also have my doubts that leaving her in prison to rot as opposed to putting her in a convent under strict conditions with a requirement to do useful work every day is any better for society or for her. Obviously she should not be allowed out without supervision or to be near children.
Brian says:

August 5, 2012 at 3:18 pm

Can Rod or anyone else point to a single religious source of any religion that is denouncing these nuns? It seems clear from the Get Religion story that there’s a huge degree of plain old anti-Catholicism at work in Belgium in this story. I’m not going to transfer that to our context, but I want to know if anyone can point to a single Orthodox, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, etc., authority who is willing to denounce these nuns. I’d be pretty shocked if so.

As for the story as a whole, there’s whole lot of Old Testament thinking going on here in the comments. Not a whole lot of New Testament sentiment. And to paraphrase a quote I recently read, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled wasn’t to convince the world he doesn’t exist, it was to convince the world he was just a child molester (in the original of course, he’s Hitler).
Roland de Chanson says:

August 5, 2012 at 5:30 pm

I have now spent a fair amount of time reading the press reports about this incident, both the French and the Flemish. Though my Flemish is not good, I get the impression that these nuns responded to an ouverture from the defense attorney, lacking which, the prisoner would not have been paroled. That is certainly the jist of the French reports. Nevertheless there is understandable outrage over the criminal’s release.

I share Rod’s umbrage that she was released at all, but that is a matter of civil law. But i think he is totally out of line excoriating the Poor Clares for their very decent act of charity.

Personally, were I dictator of Belgium, I’d have sentenced both Michelle Martin and her husband to be beheaded in the public square with a dull penknife. But that’s just the Mohammedan in me.
Erin Manning says:

August 5, 2012 at 5:43 pm

Well, this case has certainly piqued my interest in international criminal law.

In Belgium, it appears that all “life” sentences mean a sentence of 30 years in prison. Prisoners sentenced to “life” or 30 years can first apply for parole when they’ve served 1/3 of that sentence, or ten years. Given that Martin’s lawyer has applied for parole five times and been rejected four of those times, she has served more time than many “lifers” already.

Also, one international news source I saw (forgot to save the link, alas) said that the French convent originally agreed to take Martin (there was an implication that she would be put *somewhere* regardless of what they did) but that a French judge actually blocked the transfer, not the convent itself, at least not initially.

Martin’s parole was granted (and may have been granted longer ago than we think; the timeline is unclear) by the authorities in Belgium. Having had the first arrangement made fall through there appears to have been something of a scramble to find someplace to take her. Those who speculate that her position as someone granted parole but forced to remain in prison due to the unwillingness of an authorized organization to take her in might have allowed her to petition for a full release in the international courts are on to something. I haven’t been able to track down specifics (alas, I am deficient in foreign languages) but it would appear that there are precedents for that sort of thing.

What would be worse: having the convent take her in under their supervision, or having her lawyers claim in the European court system that as a woman granted parole yet forced to remain incarcerated her human rights were being violated, and thus secure her total release? If that’s what this boils down to, the nuns are blameless, and the sentencing system and parole system in Belgium woefully inadequate. How many Belgian “life sentence” prisoners serve the full 30 years? From the brief reading I’ve done, it would seem that that is the exception rather than the rule.
John E_o says:

August 5, 2012 at 7:11 pm

You know Erin, that’s two recent topics here on which our thought processes have run in similar paths – strange, eh?
Dave Dutcher says:

August 5, 2012 at 8:10 pm

William, the problem is that your kind of jail would be worse. Yes, secular jails are bad and have problems, but at least they don’t try to mold the prisoner’s soul. There’s tremendous potential for abuse in that, and current prison ministries avoid this by making them dependent on the choice of the prisoner to attend. And they work, as well as anything can.

I may not be a good Christian in this regard, but we simply cannot force people to belief or put them in an atmosphere hostile to what they believe and expect good things. We also cannot be co-opted by the state or Christianity itself will be changed to reflect the state’s interests over time.
sjay says:

August 5, 2012 at 9:41 pm

Do you really believe that the nuns had a “Christian obligation” to take Martin in? How do you figure that? Seems to me a Christian has an obligation to try to love even the unlovable. The belief that Christians have an obligation to make possible a killer’s early release from prison is bizarre.

Yes, I think the Christian standard is to welcome the rejected sinner. It’s a tough standard that I fail all the time but it is the standard. It’s the cost of picking up the Cross. Conceptually, I think you mischaracterize the situation as “Christian’s making possible a killer’s early release from prison.” More accurately, I think the situation is that the killer was eligible to be paroled but could not actually be paroled unless someone was willing to take her in. I think the nuns did what we are called to do and picked up their Cross. I really don’t know what to make of Christians who don’t see that.
David J. White says:

August 5, 2012 at 10:07 pm

“Dead Man Walking” (I forget the author’s name).

Sister Helen Prejean.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

August 5, 2012 at 10:21 pm

From what is offered here, we don’t know enough about Michelle Martin. The way she left the two girls to starve to death suggest a mentally and emotionally numbed wife who did what he husband told her to do, didn’t know what to do without instructions, was afraid to do anything on her own volition, and might have been incapable of it. In short, she may have been victim as well as perpetrator.

IF so, and it depends on all kinds of facts not evident here. the the nuns are doing the right thing. Clearly, Martin cannot be simply released. She is not capable of functioning without a good deal of supervision, and may never be. Entering a convent may be far more appropriate than keeping her in prison.

There are those who would prefer prison to a convent, after all.

In any event, I am unimpressed by facile remarks that 30 years isn’t long enough, and deference to the victimized families. Criminal justice isn’t about the families’ desire for retribution. It is about protecting the community as a whole. There is no way to quantify in years how much is “enough” time for serious crimes. There are many criteria for parole, and parole boards should do their job, thoroughly, without fearing that every decision will be second-guessed by media pundits and blog posters. Since that is impossible to enforce, they should develop thick skins and do their job no matter what anyone says.
William Dalton says:

August 6, 2012 at 2:12 am

“I may not be a good Christian in this regard, but we simply cannot force people to belief or put them in an atmosphere hostile to what they believe and expect good things. We also cannot be co-opted by the state or Christianity itself will be changed to reflect the state’s interests over time.”

David, putting someone in a Christian convent, or prison, does not force him to believe anything. It requires him or her only to remain there and abide by the rules of the institution. Putting someone in a secular prison, by comparison, frequently involves the infliction of physical and psychological torments designed not only to conform that person’s behavior to acceptable standards, but also to have them respond with all the desirable bromides of contemporary culture. In pointing to the success of Christian prison ministries you acknowledge the truth of this.

I posted my first comment, not to build a case for Christian prisons as such, but simply to point out that putting someone in a Christian convent and forcing them to stay there is no less a form of imprisonment than keeping them in a secular prison. Rod, and perhaps you, seem to be schizophrenic in your response to this. What do you believe – that releasing notorious criminals into Christian communities is remitting the punishment they are due, or is it inflicting on them an abuse of their rights even worse than placing them in prison? This appears to me to be an example of how American culture today denigrates the value of the Christian faith while demonizing as harmful its application.
Peter says:

August 6, 2012 at 3:42 am

She was instructed by her husband to feed the children.
Clearly she was capable of ignoring his instructions even if only passively.
James Kabala says:

August 6, 2012 at 9:14 am

“because a bunch of do-gooder nuns felt sorry for that person”

It’s pretty clear by now that this was not an initiative of the nuns. Whether they were wrong to respond to the initiative of the civil authorities is a different matter.
Joe Magarac says:

August 6, 2012 at 11:28 am

In Italy, a Capuchin monastery runs a halfway-house for paroled prisoners. In January 2012, David Catalano, a paroled prisoner who was staying there, escaped and was caught by police. He begged the police to return him to prison, saying that it was better than living under the monks’ strict supervision.

I mention this because it suggests that: 1) arrangements like the one at issue here (in which the Poor Clares are proposing to house Ms. Dutroux) are not uncommon in Europe; and 2) Rod’s intuition that staying with the Poor Clears was going to be easier than staying in prison may not, in fact, be correct.
Erin Manning says:

August 6, 2012 at 2:02 pm

Peter, I’ve seen various news articles that say that Martin was instructed by her husband to feed the children and didn’t, and others that say simply that their feeding was up to her and she didn’t do it. Ah, the frustration of not being able to read any of this in original language primary source material (such as court documents)!

Because if the only evidence we have that Dutroux instructed or ordered or even simply expected Martin to feed his victims comes from statements made by Dutroux himself, then believing those statements with childlike trust seems wildly disconnected from the reality of who Dutroux was and what he did to innocent children.

The media does not do any better job reporting on crimes and criminal cases than they do when they report on science or religion. Keeping that in mind is a good idea, whatever you think about Martin.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:32 am

Thank you Erin. I was thinking that we don’t really know what transactions occurred between this husband and wife.

I’ve known a few women who were battered into daily numbness, and its not a straightforward “Oh, she knew what he was doing.” The one I recall best had the good sense to meet her husband at the door and blow him away with his own shotgun. She cut a deal for ten years, which means the DA saw a finite possibility a jury would let her walk. Would that Martin had done the same EARLY in Dutroux’s career.

But the point is not that Martin is a recovering victim, period. We don’t know. A bunch of bloggers who heard what someone said some reporter said are not qualified to make definitive statements.
theajoy says:

August 13, 2012 at 11:14 am

The level of your outrage leads me to ask a basic question: exactly how much do you really know about the “refuge” into which this prisoner has been taken?

The spiritual life of a Poor Clare is joyous, but the daily lifestyle is penitential. The nuns are enclosed (they do not go out of the cloister except for necessity), they do manual labor every day, they either raise their own food or live on whatever is donated, and most of their day is spent in total silence. I somehow doubt that you yourself would be able to tolerate the level of uniformity and regimentation that are part and parcel of the Poor Clare’s “horarium.”

Your parolee is hardly being released to an easy life–and I am sure that this was an issue in the court’s decision. I would suspect that there are many incarcerated women in this world who have a much easier life on a daily basis than the Poor Clare — who belongs to one of the more austere orders in monastic tradition.

I would suggest that you do a little digging into the lifestyle of the community that has taken the parolee in, before blowing your top as you have. You might just learn something . . .