Michelle Martin Out Of Jail Early To Pray

[sugarfree irony]

The 'remorseless' ex-wife of one of Europe's most reviled child killers is to be released from prison to spend the next ten years 'at prayer' in a convent.

Michelle Martin, 52, has served 16 years of 30-year jail term for complicity in the imprisonment and murder of the young victims of Belgian serial killer husband Marc Dutroux.

Families of Dutroux's victims have branded the ruling by the Belgian court in Mons as 'an outrage'.

Dutroux was arrested in 1996 and jailed for life in June 2004 for the kidnap, rape and torture of six young girls in the mid-1990s, four of whom died.

Martin was also arrested in 1996 and later found guilty of helping Dutroux hold his victims prisoner.

She was also convicted of complicity in the death of two of the small girls, found starved to death in a cellar in the southern city of Charleroi.

Under Belgian law, convicts can appeal for early release after serving a third of their sentence.

Martin has repeatedly requested to be freed to live in a convent but until now nuns in France and Belgium had all refused to house her.

Now she has been accepted at the Clarisses monastery in the city of Malonne - just 45 miles from the scene of her crimes.

Horrified Jean-Denis Lejeune, father of Julie Lejeune, one of the two eight-year-olds found in Dutroux's cellar, said: 'No one has consulted us, and now she will be living as a virtually free woman just 60 kilometres away.

Martin must live under strict conditions while resident at the convent, including not attempting to contact any of the victims' families or friends, and not speaking to the media about her crimes.

She would only be allowed out of the confines of the convent under strict supervision of nuns and probation workers, officials said.

But in ten years time she will be eligible for full release into the community, the court ruled.

The Dutroux affair erupted in August, 1996, when police arrested the unemployed electrician following the abduction of 14-year-old girl Laetitia Delhez.

She was found alive two days later along with severely emaciated Sabine Dardenne, 12, in the basement of his house the Charleroi suburb of Marcinelle.

Then in August, 1998, the bodies of eight-year-olds Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo were found buried in the garden of Dutroux's other home in the southern town of Sars La Buissiere.

A month later, the bodies of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks were found in another property owned by Dutroux.

Public anger increased when came to light that police had missed a string of clues that could have led to Dutroux being apprehended earlier.

It also emerged that he had been released from jail in 1992 after serving just three years of a 13-year sentence for the abduction and rape of five girls.

Nationwide fury boiled over and more than 300,000 people took to the streets of Brussels in October 1996 in a series of marches to protest at judicial incompetence.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...r-convent.html

I don't remember hearing about Marc Dutroux before this . Truly evil couple . More about the crimes here
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/s...ux/evil_1.html

[CbabyRKO]

She should die in jail, what a slap in the face of the victims and the families. I for one believe the bitch has no soul but who am I to judge.

[spifftastic]

She helped young girls die in a 3' x 7' x 5' concrete cell in her wall and she gets to be free? Yeah, I'd be pretty pissed if I was related to the girls she helped starve to death too.

[biteme]

She helped young girls die in a 3' x 7' x 5' concrete cell in her wall and she gets to be free? Yeah, I'd be pretty pissed if I was related to the girls she helped starve to death too.

I'm Fucking outraged and I'm not related

[Obsolete]

I remember this case, there were so many people involved in the killings/kidnappings/rapes of these girls and every single one of them should rot in prison for the rest of their lives.

[AngelFire]

Fuck her, she should die a lonely death in PRISON. Why can't se pray in her fucking cell?

[Jerri Blank]

This lady killed those kids - she did it, at the end of the day it is on her. Fuck her sorry ass, I hope someone murders her too.

[Kylie]

Well Belgian Law is some horse shit.

[VXIII]

I agree with @AngelFire, why cant she pray in her cell? She can tie a rag over her head get a rosary and pray there. This reminds me of the middle ages when women were always getting off from doing shit by going to a nunnery.

[Dakota Valkyrie]

The former wife and accomplice of the convicted child killer Marc Dutroux was released from prison on Tuesday afternoon after last-ditch appeals to keep her behind bars failed.

the release, which was expected, infuriated families of victims of crimes that shocked the world 20 years ago for their brutality and the failures of the country’s police and judicial systems to bring the couple to justice sooner.

In recent weeks, Belgians have relived some of that trauma amid an unfolding debate about whether the decision to release Michelle Martin, 52, is yet another sign that the country’s justice system needs reform, and whether such a person should even be allowed her chance at rehabilitation.

The country’s highest appeals court, the Cour de Cassation, ruled on Tuesday that no procedural errors had been made by a lower court to allow Ms. Martin to live on conditional release in a convent after serving barely half of her 30-year sentence for her part in the mid-1990s kidnappings, rapes and killings by Marc Dutroux, who then was her husband.
[...]

Ms. Martin’s lawyer, Thierry Moreau, has described the convent as a place where she would seek to redeem herself while on parole.

But whether Ms. Martin would immediately go to the convent — an attractive red-brick complex with ivy-covered walls south of Brussels — was unclear on Tuesday evening. As one of the most despised people in the country, her safety could be at risk.

Belgian television reports on Tuesday showed the convent sprayed with green fluorescent paint reading “No, No M.M.,” Ms. Martin’s initials.

Demonstrations flared this month in Brussels calling for Ms. Martin to be kept incarcerated and for tougher rules on freeing convicted criminals, and there could be more protests this weekend opposing her arrival at the convent.
[...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/wo...n-belgium.html