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With an uncle on holidays in the Ardennes

I met Regina Louf, the main witness in the Dutroux case aka X1, once. It was somewhere around the year 2000 at a debate held in a packed Belgian café between two journalists; one defending her testimony that pointed to the extended VIP network , and the other voicing his suspicions.

Observing the extreme familiarity and disrespect with which the doubting journalist of the Flemish magazine Knack addressed Regina Louf, who was in the audience, how he casually yet relentlessly attacked and tried to discredit her, made me realize that I was far from ready to come out with my story. I had shared basic facts with the other journalist in the debate, who that evening introduced me to Regina without specifying that I was also a survivor of the network. And that was that.

Back in the US, some weeks later, I called her. I can’t remember the reason; I was trying indirectly to advance the cause, but I do remember that I shared that I had also been abused in the Belgian network. She was quick, kind and forthcoming, and I appreciated her sense of humor. At some point, I was describing a perpetrator whose image had been coming through in memories; tall, blond, young, who wore jeans and often white or jean shirts or sailor stripes. She wondered if it might be Patrick Haemers.

Though this phone call changed my life, Regina and I never spoke again. Memories with Patrick Haemers were flooding my system and would dominate my therapy sessions for years to come.

A few years ago, I was made aware that a Belgian criminologist and therapist who had played some role in the Dutroux affair and who had continued to speak out publicly, was discrediting me. Reddit posts contained screenshots of conversations in which she labeled me as controlled opposition. “She is lying about her story. She hijacked it from Regina Louf (X1).” (See below). This therapist/criminologist also dubbed herself a survivor advocate and often alluded to her close bond to Louf.

When I confronted the criminologist she explained that her social media accounts had been hacked, that she supports survivors and would never say anything of the sort. We talked for hours, and sometime later, as I was planning to visit Belgium to be filmed for a documentary about network abuse “Les Survivantes” we made an appointment in the quaint medieval village where she lived, and met in the garden of a local restaurant, film crew in tow.

Previous to the trip, I was asked in an interview how I had remembered Patrick Haemers’ name, and had simply answered the question. Since 2020 I’d had a few interactions with Regina Louf’s husband - as she was in poor health - so before the visit to Belgium, I checked with the husband if he would ask Regina for permission to talk about some of the content of that conversation we’d had more than 20 years earlier, content which I didn’t know if she had publicly shared or not. Not having received an answer, I had asked the criminologist if she would check with them again. The criminologist showed me her phone screen with the reply that Regina didn’t remember talking to me back then, that she didn’t remember me. That was not surprising, though, said the criminologist, since Regina had been speaking to so many survivors during those years.

The day after meeting the criminologist I did an interview in Bruges. Obviously I don’t need permission to share that Regina put a name to someone pretty much anyone in Belgium at that time could have guessed based on my description. During that same interview, I also clarified that we had only spoken once around the year 2000 and added that Regina Louf did not remember our conversation, so as not to misrepresent our relationship and make it appear as if we were close when we are not. I left out the more sensitive content from our conversation I had asked about.

The entire time that I have been speaking out, I have received almost no public support from anyone connected to the Dutroux affair. There was exactly one endorsement (see below) in a Facebook comment by one of the original police investigators on the case, Michel Clippe, with whom I had several video calls.

Even though I had hope that Regina might wish to connect with me (after being asked many times to interview her for my podcast) and show her support, I don’t feel that it would be fair in any way to expect anything, quite apart from her condition and the fact she has not appeared in public for years. But I was hopeful that the criminologist, who never stopped giving interviews, might at least publicly set the record straight, diffuse the defamatory comments and affirm her support.

Great was my surprise when recently she publicly criticized me over a banal issue of word usage. I shot off an angry mail and got an angry reply back. That reply sent me in a trauma cramp.

“Let’s face it: I have been four times at Regina and [her husband] and asked them if they ever heard about you. 4 times over several years. Face to face. And the day before you came to Belgium you called me again to ask Regina to confirm that she told you it was Patrick Haemers who saved you…”

I was already so triggered that I didn’t even take note of the enormous distortion, from Regina having told me the name of someone who was infamous in Belgium, to having her personally witness my dramatic rescue from the network.

In her email the criminologist wrote that she doesn’t understand why I continue to lie about this. This accusation in this decidedly Belgian context threw my body in a panic. I could barely read what came next, something about 18 people in different countries who don’t know each other who contacted her, all confirming that I was abused in a network, yes, but differently from what I am sharing. Her message ends on another note about the lies. “You just cannot do this.”

Eighteen people! The astounding number of survivors or network insiders - whoever they were - who’d confided in her - whatever that was - because she didn’t share what all these people told her. My supposed true reality, hidden from me behind a veil of secrecy in a confusing, accusing email.

It felt as though I was having a heart attack, and I was having real difficulty breathing. I found myself back in childhood, after horrendous abuse, recoiling from the force of the charge that I am a liar, staggering, falling down, curling into a ball, once again completely overcome with the tremendous confusion that everything I knew might be false.

My skin must be grey. Every muscle is tight and stiff. I try to picture my Parental Self coming to comfort that little girl, pick her up and take her away, and find that she can’t receive comfort; she needs to stay in this cramp, needs to panic, because… A slightly smaller copy of this inner child forms, and then another, again a little smaller than the previous one, and another, and another. There are so many little parts that have been called a liar, that have been gaslit. There are too many. Each one stuck in the most horrific terror of fearing that the abusers are right and that her entire reality is wrong, false, non-existent. She has been screamed at during or after sexual abuse too many times, each time forming another little part.

This unbearable heaviness, this weight on my chest, the incredible grayness. This dissolution of what I am so as to absorb the filth, the slime, the grossness which becomes what I must be. No! No! My heart races in the fear that I am a filthy liar.

“Did I get things wrong?” “Am I missing huge pieces of my story?” “Am I going to be called out on mistakes I made, memories that may not have been fully accurate?”

I couldn’t calmly and rationally think about the possibilities, too overwhelmed, the body in a state of terror, the shame and the shaming of such a scenario fully descending on me. And all this is happening days prior to the Belgian premiere of the documentary film “Les Survivantes” in a Brussels movie theater - the film we were shooting when I visited the criminologist along with the film crew.

While parts work seemed impossible, it did immediately occur to me that this circumstance and this person represent the next step in my unfoldment. This affirmation, words by my teacher Yogananda, never left me throughout the ordeal.

Without sleep, the only way to calm the body and mind was to do kriya yoga, the pranayama technique that is part of my meditation practice. Long breath in. Long breath out. Focusing the mind on the breath alone. In the stillness after the practice, insights would emerge.

It dawned on me that it is simply impossible that eighteen people who have supposedly all lived through horrors together with me in a network, who had witnessed me being victimized when I was a child, would all have contacted this criminologist, and not me. Why would I have never heard anyone else mention anything of the sort? Why would no one want me to know the truth?

It seems like a move the network might contrive. If eighteen people would know something very significant that I don’t, I can’t imagine that all eighteen of them would wish to portray me as deceptive rather than mistaken, that they would have no compassion. I know the great privilege of having encountered exactly one person whom I had also seen in childhood in the network context. Finding each other again and exchanging precious details about our experiences as children was sacred, beautiful and powerfully affirming.

If this Belgian criminologist believes I am a liar, who benefits?

She even addresses this issue herself, only turning it against me, as if my lies are going to be found out and will hurt the cause: “But what is been told, has to be the Truth and only the Truth. This devastating field is too vulnerable and can be destroyed in a heartbeat.”

Blind to her own contribution in said destruction, she asks: “I suppose they are all liars? All 18 of them?” I suppose that they are. I suppose the network knew exactly what they were doing.

Once I understood this, I began to feel relief - usually a sign that the truth is settling. Yesterday was the premiere of “Les Survivantes,” and while I am in the US, I was present via video call and shown the large full Brussels cinema. The beautiful faces of my fellow-survivors smiled warmly as they stood on stage together after the movie had played, answering questions from the audience. I love these women. I wanted to be there.

I was asked if I would say something. Looking out at the crowd of hundreds of people, I became deeply moved, and, for a few seconds, speechless. With breaking voice I announced: “I am often a little bit afraid of Belgium because of my childhood experiences, but seeing you all here is a miracle. I could never have dreamed this in a million years. I can only say thank you, thank you, thank you, with all my heart.”

Through the phone, I heard a roaring applause; people got up out of their seats for a standing ovation, and then I broke out in tears.

Above: Opening of the feature-length documentary interviewing survivors of organized abuse, SRA and mind control “Les Survivantes” in Brussels. Check for showings here.

Below: Comment on Facebook by Michel Clippe, police investigator on original team checking the X-testimonies in the Dutroux Case.

“I am also in contact with Anneke, by video conference, for some time now… Most of the people she names have also been named by X3 and in part also by X1. Astonishing!!!… More so because she names people that were not pointed to by X1 but people whom I suspected could be part of the network because of their closeness to the milieu that was described by Regina… For me there is no doubt: Anneke confirms and more importantly, reinforces that which the X-witnesses have made clear to us!!!!”

Below: Reddit posts with screenshots of conversations with criminologist.