I wished them all the happiness I could. According to him, my parents were mean. I still loved them even so. I just wanted to go home."

Dit boek bestaat vanwege de vreselijke gebeurtenissen die Sabine heeft moeten meemaken. Wat had ik het fijn gevonden als zij dit niet had hoeven meemaken en het boek dus ook niet zou bestaan. But on the whole, she insists, she is just like any other 21-year-old. "Let's see, what would be different now if that shit-for-brains hadn't crossed my path?" she wonders. "Well, I'm sure I'd have a boyfriend, though getting him might have been a little bit easier. My family relations are rather strained, but that would probably have happened sooner or later anyway. Work would be the same. Maybe I'm a little bit more suspicious, a little bit more demanding of people. But basically, I think I'm me." Now a woman of 22, Laetitia recalled for the court how Dutroux had appeared to revel in the abuse he was inflicting. In it, she noted her mother's days off work with a circle, each time Dutroux came to see with a cross, and each time he abused her with a star.https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/judiciaire/2004/02/09/an-et-eefje-jusquau-bout-de-lhorreur-DOVZ2UWZERBTNPKRGMRIUTZ4P4/

With the fierce courage that got her through her 80 days of hell and their aftermath, Dardenne bluntly outlines the wrongs inflicted on her. Sebold, with the confidence of great literary gifts and 20 years of reflection, is able to use a writer's detachment to revisit and dissect.

Enfance brisée

That is not true, of course. What she has done, principally, is resist. She resisted Dutroux, who last year was sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping and rape of six young girls and the murder of four of them. Throughout her long weeks as his hostage, when, by his own confession, he would, among many other abuses, force her to perform oral sex and then give her a sweet "to take away the taste", she never stopped getting at him, pestering him, complaining, moaning, badgering, demanding. For them and many others, the crucial question is whether Dutroux is telling the truth in hinting that he procured girls for a network of establishment figures, and that a massive cover-up is going on. Melissa's parents and many Belgians with them believed him, and that other people had access to their daughter and her friend Julie, and that the failure to investigate this pointed to a cover-up of a wider paedophile ring that included police officers and members of the country's establishment. I'm all right for the moment, I am very calm," she said as her mother was taken ill and had to be carried to an ambulance. Worse still, police searched the house where Julie and Melissa were hidden but failed to find them. Once they heard cries for help but accepted Dutroux's claim that the noise was coming from children in the street. No listening devices, heat sensors or other equipment was used, but police found handcuffs, chloroform, vaginal cream and a gynaecological mirror.