The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sabine Dardenne.md

category	tags	summary	born	location	relations	created	updated
Belgium Scandals	Person Belgium Dutroux	Twelve-year-old from the Tournai area abducted by Marc Dutroux on May 27, 1996, and freed from his Marcinelle cellar with Laetitia Delhez on August 15, 1996.	1983-10-28	Tournai, Belgium	type with role start end fn subject_of Marc Dutroux abducted May 27, 1996; freed August 15, 1996 1996-05-27 1996-08-15 2	2026-04-28	2026-09-22

Sabine Dardenne, aged twelve, was abducted on May 27, 1996, on her way to school, and was freed on August 15, 1996.¹² The investigation cell set up for her disappearance at Tournai was staffed by the gendarmerie. Information on Marc Dutroux held by the missing-persons unit reached it only after a fax of June 20, 1996, from the General Police Support Service (SGAP); the missing-persons unit told a coordination meeting on June 26 that Dutroux was the subject of an investigation, including surveillance, by the Charleroi criminal investigation brigade that had so far been negative. Assuming that Charleroi was following Dutroux closely, the investigating judge and the cell did not contact the Charleroi gendarmerie, and did not learn that the surveillance had long since ended. The commission found the investigation "essentially passive" and limited to its own district.²

After a witness at Bertrix gave three digits of a license plate following the abduction of Laetitia Delhez on August 9, Dutroux, his wife Michelle Martin and Michel Lelievre were arrested at about five in the afternoon on August 12, 1996. A search of the house on August 13 with tracker dogs found nothing; on August 15 Dutroux confessed, and on his directions Sabine and Laetitia were found alive in the concealed cell in the cellar of his house at Marcinelle, Belgium.²

On June 17, 2004, the jury at Arlon convicted Dutroux of her abduction, sequestration and rape, and Lelièvre, who did not deny it, of her abduction and sequestration; Martin was convicted of her sequestration. Jean-Michel Nihoul was acquitted of the charges relating to the abductions.³⁴

The Abduction and the Cellar

Lelièvre was said to have blocked her path on her bicycle near a factory while Dutroux seized her and forced her into a van, using chloroform. The cell, built in 1993 with the labor of Claude Thirault and hidden behind shelving, was the one in which Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo had been held. She was described as having been conditioned by Dutroux with drugs and hypnosis into dependence on him, and as having embraced him when they were found. Dutroux was said to have told her she was being held for ransom. More than twenty calls between Dutroux and Nihoul were reported around the abductions. At the trial she testified to the manipulation she had undergone and to the roles of Martin and Lelièvre.¹

Footnotes

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1. Dovey, S. Eye of the Chickenhawk. Thehotstar, 2023. Sole source for the passages so cited. Its dates for the abduction (May 26, 1996) and for Dutroux's arrest (August 13, 1996) are contradicted by the commission's report; its placing of the abduction at Farciennes is not supported by the report, which records the investigation as run from Tournai. ↩︎

2. 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, Doc. 713/6-96/97, April 18, 1997, pp. 86-88 and the chronology of August 1996; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713006.pdf ↩︎

3. "Nihoul acquitté pour les enlèvements." La Dernière Heure, June 17, 2004; translated from the French. https://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/2004/06/17/nihoul-acquitte-pour-les-enlevements-MF73NPYQVBC25I2Y6P54BXIQDA/ ↩︎

4. "Notorious child rapist-murderer convicted." NBC News and Associated Press, June 17, 2004. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5233011 ↩︎