Dutroux Victim's Family Quit Trial

Six years after their eight-year-old daughter's defiled body was unearthed at the home of Marc Dutroux, the parents of Melissa Russo say they have lost faith in investigators and are withdrawing from the convicted Belgian paedophile's long-awaited trial.

He is charged with kidnapping and abusing six girls, aged eight to 19, and killing four of them.

The parents of Julie Lejeune - another eight-year-old who starved to death in a cage in Dutroux's basement along with Melissa - have said it is "99% certain" that they too will quit for the same reasons, raising fears that the trial of Belgium's number one hate figure will be seriously flawed and lack credibility.

The case is expected to come to court by the middle of next year after an extraordinary series of delays and mistakes which has seen Dutroux temporarily escape, then seek unsuccessfully to sue the authorities for violating his human rights by treating him inhumanely.

The fact that the victims' parents are cutting their ties with the trial is highly embarrassing for the authorities and will confirm the suspicions of many Belgians that the police and the judicial authorities have bungled the investigation and are guilty of a cover-up because establishment figures were implicated in the original crimes.

This year Dutroux claimed he did not act alone but was part of a wider paedophile network for whom he procured girls - a theory backed by the victims' parents but dismissed by the authorities.

It is the authorities' unwillingness to look into this possibility which has infuriated many of the parents, together with a feeling that investigators have failed to answer even the most fundamental of questions such as who kidnapped their daughters, how did they die and who were their killers.

Melissa's mother, Carine Russo, said that the huge dossier on the case contained "nothing about the children".

"We still don't know whether Dutroux acted alone. We merely accept his version of events," she said.

The Russos would not participate in the trial, added Victor Hissel, their lawyer, because they did not want to sanction a flawed investigation. "Far too many things [in the investigation] have not been done at all or done badly," he said.