Belgian who aided child abuse starts convent life

The screaming, insults and scuffles that accompanied the night-time arrival of one of Belgium’s most despised criminals at a bucolic convent have abated.

A local legislator who suggested in a Tweet that Michelle Martin, the woman who let two 8-year-old girls starve to death in a cellar and helped her paedophile husband carry out horrific abuse 16 years ago, should be “taken down” said yesterday his comment should not be taken seriously.

And political talk is centring on how to toughen the conditions for early release in Belgium to avoid having a criminal like Martin walk free after serving only 16 years of her 30-year sentence.