DUTROUX. Marc Dutroux was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 for the rape, kidnapping and murder of underage girls. In prison for 25 years, he has seen all his requests for release denied.
[Mis à jour le 25 août 2022 à 21h17] Marc Dutroux has been imprisoned for more than 25 years in the prison of Nivelles, in Belgium. Sentenced in 2004 to life imprisonment, he could apply for parole after 15 years behind bars. Called the “monster of Charleroi”, Marc Dutroux was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering six young women, some of them minors, between 1995 and 1996. His ex-wife and accomplice, Michelle Martin, will be released on Friday August 26, 2022. The 62-year-old woman has served 16 of the 30 years in prison she was sentenced to, plus ten years on parole. Indeed, the detainee had obtained her conditional release in August 2012, which had provoked anger in Belgium. Michelle Martin had been convicted of having participated in the kidnapping of six girls by Marc Dutroux.
What is Marc Dutroux’s daily life in prison?
Twenty years in prison have left their mark on the health of Marc Dutroux. The lawyer for the serial killer and rapist, Me Bruno Dayez, described the man as depressed and “at the bottom of the abyss” in front of the Belgian press in February 2021. The argument was to be used to justify the request for parole which does not never came to fruition.
Detained in the Belgian prison of Nivelles, in a cell of 9 m2, since his incarceration in 1996, Marc Dutroux has been placed under an isolation regime which strictly limits his visits, his activities and deprives him of access to certain objects. A surveillance that the lawyer of the monster of Charleroi deplored in the pages of Last hour in February 2021. Me Dayez had indicated that his client did not have the right to telephone and could not read his mail alone.
Despite the isolation regime and the seriousness of the acts of which he was found guilty, Marc Dutroux was able to work in the prison from 2015, after 19 years of imprisonment. He worked three hours a day as a surface technician in the penitentiary centre. A job he decided to stop in 2021, because the prison was “constantly putting a spoke in his wheels” according to the comments reported by his lawyer to the press: “We imposed hours on him that were not possible, we imposed on him to start at 6 o’clock in the morning without any justification, they forbade him to go to work in shorts, they left him to wait an hour in the cold. The killer’s daily life boils down to being alone in his cell or alone in the yard, a few hours a day.
Can Marc Dutroux get parole?
Marc Dutroux was sentenced to the heaviest of sentences, life imprisonment, which reduced his chances of obtaining parole to almost zero. A possibility which was however offered to Michelle Martin, his wife and accomplice at the material time. She escaped life imprisonment by receiving 30 years in prison, a sentence reduced to 16 years in prison and 10 years of parole.
The killer, however, tried several times to obtain an adjustment of his sentence. The first attempt in 2012 proved to be a failure, but the man remained hopeful of being placed on semi-freedom under electronic bracelet in April 2013, date on which according to the terms of the law, he became releasable. The same year, the sentence enforcement court (TAP) was to rule on Marc Dutroux’s request for parole but rejected it. A decision justified by “the lack of prospect of reintegration” but also the lack of accommodation for his release. The friend who had first offered to house the killer and pedophile had finally changed his mind, therefore the two sine qua non conditions for parole were not met. The possibility of a recurrence had also motivated the decision of the TAP, the experts had in particular considered the risk significant. An opinion shared by the mother of Marc Dutroux according to his statements to the press taken up by The Parisian “Marc is not ready to be released because he always wants to blame others for his actions. I’m sure he’ll do it again. He has no sense of reality. He’s a repeat offender. “
In October 2019, Marc Dutroux had asked to be assessed again by psychiatrists for a new request for release. For the process, the killer had also sent a letter to the parents of his victims, the document had aroused the deep anger of the families. The prisoner’s project had been discouraged by this bad publicity as well as by a 2020 expert report which explained that Marc Dutroux was still a psychopath and a certain danger to society.