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role: "witness X1"
fn: 1
created: 2026-04-28
updated: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-10-09
---
Regina Louf, born in Ghent in 1969, was the witness known as X1 in the investigation opened at Neufchâteau after the arrest of [[Marc Dutroux]] in August 1996. The investigating judge [[Jean-Marc Connerotte]] had set up a free telephone line for information on child abuse; a Dutch-speaking caller, Tania, a friend of Louf's, reached the gendarme Patrick De Baets, who was in Connerotte's office at the time, and after some days Louf herself contacted him. A special cell of the Brussels BSR under De Baets questioned her, with every interview videotaped and summarized in French for Neufchâteau, while senior gendarmerie officers and magistrates watched from behind glass. Her statements opened a series of "related files," the [[X-Dossier]].[^1]
Regina Louf, born in Ghent in 1969, was the witness known as X1 in the investigation opened at Neufchâteau after the arrest of [[Marc Dutroux]] in August 1996. The investigating judge [[Jean-Marc Connerotte]] had set up a free telephone line for information on child abuse; a Dutch-speaking caller, Tania, a friend of Louf's, reached the gendarme [[Patrick De Baets]], who, according to the Senate proposal of 2000, was in Connerotte's office at the time, and after some days Louf herself contacted him. A special cell of the Brussels BSR under De Baets questioned her, with every interview videotaped and summarized in French for Neufchâteau, while senior gendarmerie officers and magistrates watched from behind glass. Her statements opened a series of "related files," the [[X-Dossier]].[^1]
### Her Account
She was questioned at length thirteen times under the code name X1. She summarized her family background in two sentences: "My mother was abused by her father, a police commissioner in Knokke. I was rented out by my mother, with my father's knowledge."[^2] Louf said that from early childhood she had been prostituted by her grandmother, [[Cecile Beernaert]], at a villa in [[Knokke-Heist]] near the [[Royal Zoute Golf Club]], that at about twelve she was handed to a pimp, [[Tony Van den Boggaert|Tony Van den Bogaert]], who took her to parties in Brussels attended by [[Jean-Michel Nihoul]], and that the parties moved from sex to torture and murder. Among those she named as clients or participants were the former prime minister [[Paul Vanden Boeynants]] and members of the Lippens family, [[Count Leopold Lippens]] and [[Count Maurice Auguste Lippens]]. She said she had witnessed the 1984 murder of [[Christine Van Hees]] in the abandoned mushroom farm at Auderghem, naming Dutroux, Nihoul, [[Bernard Weinstein]] and the lawyer [[Michel Vander Elst]], and the 1983 death of [[Carine Dellaert]] after childbirth. She described a factory site that investigators connected to [[ASCO Industries NV]], a villa at Faulx-les-Tombes and parties on the Avenue Louise.[^3] She published her account as *Zwijgen is voor daders* in 1998.[^3]
She was questioned at length thirteen times under the code name X1. She summarized her family background in two sentences: "My mother was abused by her father, a police commissioner in Knokke. I was rented out by my mother, with my father's knowledge."[^2] The writer S. Dovey wrote that Louf said that from early childhood she had been prostituted by her grandmother, [[Cecile Beernaert]], at a villa in [[Knokke-Heist]] near the [[Royal Zoute Golf Club]], that at about twelve she was handed to a pimp, [[Tony Van den Boggaert|Tony Van den Bogaert]], who took her to parties in Brussels attended by [[Jean-Michel Nihoul]], and that the parties moved from sex to torture and murder. Among those she named as clients or participants were the former prime minister [[Paul Vanden Boeynants]] and members of the Lippens family, [[Count Leopold Lippens]] and [[Count Maurice Auguste Lippens]]. She said she had witnessed the 1984 murder of [[Christine Van Hees]] in the abandoned mushroom farm at Auderghem, naming Dutroux, Nihoul, [[Bernard Weinstein]] and the lawyer [[Michel Vander Elst]], and the 1983 death of [[Carine Dellaert]] after childbirth. She described a factory site that investigators connected to [[ASCO Industries NV]], a villa at Faulx-les-Tombes and parties on the Avenue Louise.[^3] She published her account as *Zwijgen is voor daders* in 1998.[^3]
### The Investigation of Her Testimony
Her account of Van Hees led the Brussels gendarme Aimé Bille to the unsolved file, and he found that the earlier investigation under the investigating judge [[Jean-Claude Van Espen]] had "multiple gaps." Her statements led to the reopening of the murders of Van Hees, Dellaert, [[Veronique Dubrulle]], [[Katrien de Cuyper]] and Hanim Ayse Mazibas. A psychiatric report on her by Professor Igodt of the Catholic University of Leuven was read so differently by others that its author publicly urged "extreme caution" about the concrete details of her testimony while calling them "useful data" for further investigation.[^1]
After Connerotte was removed from the Dutroux case in October 1996 and replaced by Judge Jacques Langlois, the cell came under a Mr. Duterme, who from April 1997 had De Baets's colleagues reread the interviews and report on her credibility and on possible manipulation by De Baets's team; the first report, very negative for De Baets, "totally lacked credibility," and a second was ordered. In the summer of 1997 Langlois ordered a complete rereading of all the related files and removed De Baets and Bille from the investigation. A criminal investigation of the two gendarmes by Judge Pignolet was dropped and a gendarmerie disciplinary inquiry acquitted them completely; they then filed more than eighty complaints alleging that reports in the rereading had been falsified.[^1]
The parliamentary commission's complementary report of February 16, 1998 gives a different account of the first contact. It records that a friend of the Dutch-speaking anonymous witness telephoned Judge Connerotte, who put her in contact with a Dutch-speaking investigator of the Brussels 3e SRC and then issued a written instruction to that investigator to question her. The same passage records that the 3e SRC investigators were assigned to the related files of September 1996 on the basis of this witness's statements, under files 109/96, 110/96, 111/96, 136/96 and 139/96.[^4]
In January 1998 Louf gave up her anonymity, in part to protest the stalling of the inquiry, amid a press campaign against her fed by leaks from police and judicial circles. On April 23, 1998, the day Dutroux briefly escaped, the prosecutors-general of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels decided that "no proof could be found that Regina Louf could make any contribution whatsoever to these investigations" and closed the related files. The same day, in a confrontation with Louf, the man described as her "so-called protector" admitted that he had had sex with her when she was twelve, with her parents' knowledge, and had once lent her to others; the admission was not pursued, the acts being time-barred.[^1] Her parents had told police that a family friend in his forties, Tony Van den Bogaert, had a key to their home and unlimited access to their twelve-year-old daughter, and he admitted his relationship with her to police; the RTBF program *Au Nom de la Loi* presented the parents as victims of a fantasist without mentioning either admission.[^4]
After Connerotte was removed from the Dutroux case in October 1996 and replaced by Judge Jacques Langlois, the cell came under a Mr. Duterme, who from April 1997 had De Baets's colleagues reread the interviews and report on her credibility and on possible manipulation by De Baets's team; the first report, very negative for De Baets, totally lacked credibility, and a second was ordered. In the summer of 1997 Langlois ordered a complete rereading of all the related files and removed De Baets and Bille from the investigation. A criminal investigation of the two gendarmes by Judge Pignolet was dropped and a gendarmerie disciplinary inquiry acquitted them completely; they then filed more than eighty complaints alleging that reports in the rereading had been falsified.[^1]
In January 1998 Louf gave up her anonymity, in part to protest the stalling of the inquiry, amid a press campaign against her fed by leaks from police and judicial circles. On April 23, 1998, the day Dutroux escaped, the prosecutors-general of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels decided that "no proof could be found that Regina Louf could make any contribution whatsoever to these investigations" and closed the related files. According to the Senate proposal, the same day, in a confrontation with Louf, the man it describes as her "so-called protector" admitted that he had had sex with her when she was twelve, with her parents' knowledge, and had once lent her to others; the admission was not pursued, the acts being time-barred.[^1] *The Observer* reported in 2002 that her parents had told police that a family friend in his forties, Tony Van den Bogaert, had a key to their home and unlimited access to their twelve-year-old daughter, that he had himself admitted his relationship with Louf to police, and that the RTBF program *Au Nom de la Loi* presented the parents as victims of a fantasist without mentioning either.[^5]
On July 11, 1997 the Neufchâteau investigating judge ordered a general rereading of all the related files except file 110/96. His service note for file 109 prescribed, among other steps, a reread on an adversarial basis and a list of steps aimed at making the X witnesses credible (visant à crédibiliser les X).[^6]
On June 3, 1997 the antenna head [[Jean-Luc Duterme]] told the commander of the Brussels BSR that he could no longer work with the team that had conducted the interviews of an anonymous witness. The commission records that his note said the five victims heard so far had yielded little that could objectify their statements, despite all the investigative measures taken.[^7] A [[Zembla]] programme description of March 18, 2004 states that the gendarmerie leadership judged after some months that the inquiry had been wrongly conducted and that the investigators were suspected of falsifying a procès-verbal, and that three years later an internal gendarmerie commission reported that they had done their work with integrity and professionally.[^8]
[[La Libre Belgique]] reported in 2004 that her account was recorded over more than 1,500 pages, that magistrates in Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Neufchâteau stated at a press conference on January 30, 1998 that no element of proof supported the witnesses' statements, and that on March 17, 2000 it became known that semen recovered from Van Hees's body matched neither Nihoul nor any known suspect, which the paper described as destroying the credit of X1 on the point; it adds that the chambre du conseil at Neufchâteau removed the Louf file from the prosecutor's office on October 30, 2003.[^9] A Zembla programme description of March 11, 2004 states that X1 had "daderkennis" (knowledge of the perpetrators) in the Van Hees and Dellaert cases and that the gendarmerie confirmed much of what she said; it states also that Dutroux's lawyer asked that she be heard at the Arlon trial.[^10] [[Michel Clippe]], a former adjudant of the Brussels BSR, told La Dernière Heure in 2020 that he was able to verify a great deal of what she said.[^11] On November 27, 2002 the [[Chamber of Representatives]]' justice committee tabled motions on an interpellation by [[Vincent Decroly]] on statements by the Liège prosecutor-general [[Anne Thily]] to BBC journalists about Louf; Decroly's recommendation called the statements mendacious and disqualifying and asked for a disciplinary file against Thily over her BBC statements of January 16, 2002.[^12]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Sénat de Belgique. Proposition visant à instituer une commission d'enquête parlementaire chargée d'enquêter sur l'éloignement de deux enquêteurs de la cellule d'enquête bruxelloise « Neufchâteau », déposée par M. Frans Lozie, Doc. 2-563/1, October 9, 2000, développements. https://www.senate.be
[^2]: Smoltczyk, Alexander. "Im Netz der Dossiers." *Der Spiegel,* no. 42/2001, October 14, 2001; translated from the German. https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/im-netz-der-dossiers-a-c9fe5b47-0002-0001-0000-000020353850
[^3]: Dovey, S. *Eye of the Chickenhawk.* Thehotstar, 2023. Sole source for the passages so cited; the underlying accounts are Louf, Regina, *Zwijgen is voor daders* (1998), and Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, *De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux* (Houtekiet, 1999).
[^4]: Frenkiel, Olenka. "Belgium's silent heart of darkness." *The Observer,* May 5, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/05/dutroux.featuresreview
[^3]: Dovey, S. *Eye of the Chickenhawk.* Thehotstar, 2023. The underlying accounts are Louf, Regina, *Zwijgen is voor daders. De getuigenis van X1,* Houtekiet / Linkeroever Uitgevers, 1998, 310 pp., ISBN 90-5240-487-9, and Bulté, Annemie, Douglas De Coninck and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck, *De X-dossiers: wat België niet mocht weten over de zaak-Dutroux,* Antwerp: Houtekiet, 1999, 543 pp., ISBN 90-5240-536-0.
[^4]: Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, p. 152; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf
[^5]: Frenkiel, Olenka. "Belgium's silent heart of darkness." *The Observer,* May 5, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/05/dutroux.featuresreview
[^6]: Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, p. 157; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf
[^7]: Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport complémentaire, Doc. 713/8-96/97, February 16, 1998, chapter V, pp. 154-155; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713008.pdf
[^8]: BNNVARA Zembla. "De X-dossiers, deel II," broadcast March 18, 2004; programme description in Dutch, translated. https://www.bnnvara.nl/zembla/artikelen/de-x-dossiers-deel-ii
[^9]: Planchar, Roland. "Des 'X' sans crédit." La Libre Belgique, February 16, 2004. https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/2004/02/16/des-x-sans-credit-LKLTKQICABBWXKFUTUJNXL6NRY/
[^10]: BNNVARA Zembla. "De X-dossiers, deel I," broadcast March 11, 2004; programme description in Dutch, translated. https://www.bnnvara.nl/zembla/artikelen/de-x-dossiers-deel-i
[^11]: "Régina Louf, témoin X1 dans l'affaire Dutroux, brise le silence." La Dernière Heure, online, 2020; translated from the French. https://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/regina-louf-temoin-x1-dans-l-affaire-dutroux-brise-le-silence-marc-dutroux-libere-je-m-y-prepare-5e652e1e9978e2051e15c16c
[^12]: Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Motions of November 27, 2002, DOC 50 0025/415; translated from the French and Dutch. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/Pdf/50/0025/50K0025415.pdf