Marc Dutroux is still considered a psychopath and remains at high risk of recidivism, according to experts who carried out a mental reassessment of the infamous Belgian paedophile in view of a potential parole request.
The report's conclusions are "very bad" for Dutroux, according to his lawyer Nicolas Cohen, who confirmed the report had been completed and handed into authorities on Wednesday evening, the Belga news agency reports.
In the report, mental health experts said that Dutroux was still a psychopath, described him as still lacking remorse and sympathy for his victims and concluding that he still posed a danger to society, according to Sudpresse.
The exam was commissioned in October and had been originally expected in May, but was delayed amid the coronavirus lockdown because mental health experts were not able to visit the child killer in prison.
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Now 63, Dutroux was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for the abduction and repeated rape and torture of six teenage girls whom he kept in his cellar, in a case which shocked Belgium and the international community in the 1990s.
The request for a mental reassessment came after Brussels’ criminal enforcement court (TAP/SURB) last year agreed to a request from his lawyers for an expert committee to reevaluate whether Dutroux still posed a danger to society.
Dutroux has been eligible for early release since 2013, but a request to be freed with an electronic bracelet he filed that same year, which also required a psychiatric reassessment, was rejected after a court said it was unlikely he could reintegrate back into society at that time.
Cohen said it remained unclear whether Dutroux's legal team would move forward with requesting their client be released on parole, but said that they could consider filing for penitentiary leave, which allows convicts to leave prison for fixed periods of time under certain conditions.
Last year, Dutroux's accomplice Michel Lelièvre, who together with Dutroux's ex-wife Michelle Martin, assisted in the abduction of the killer's victims, was granted conditional release, sparking widespread outrage from the public.
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
Update: This article has been updated to include the contents of the report.
