Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

44 Charleroi Case
from the thinking of Spare and Kenneth Grant
(the latter was responsible for disseminating
Spare’s writings), the Esoteric Order of Dagon
emerged in 1980. This group conjured the dark
demons created by H. P. Lovecraft. A more significant
new group to grow out of the chaos base was
Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, founded in 1981
by the musician Genesis P-Orridge.
See also Crowley, Aleister ; Magic and Magical
Groups
For Further Reading:
Baddeley, Gavin. Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship
and Rock’n’Roll. London: Plexus, 1999.
Grant, Kenneth. Images and Oracles of Austin
Osman Spare. London: Muller, 1975.
Spare, Austin Osman. The Focus of Life: The
Mutterings of Aaos. London: Morland Press,
1921.
Charleroi Case
The so-called “Monster from Charleroi,” Marc
Dutroux, was a thirty-nine-year-old unemployed
electrician. Charleroi was the town in Belgium
where he resided. In 1996, he was arrested and
charged with kidnapping, imprisoning and sexually
abusing six young girls, four of whom were found
dead. Dutroux, who had previously served time for
child molestation, had apparently been involved in
kidnapping girls, utilizing them for child pornography,
and selling them into prostitution for years. He
may have been responsible for as many as fifteen
disappearances. Not only were the details of the
case shocking, but the actions of police authorities,
who ignored many tips that could have led to the
arrest of Dutroux years earlier, were a national
scandal. Authorities were accused of being guilty of
either compliance or incompetence.
Because the ritual abuse stereotype built up
during the 1980s focused on Satanists kidnapping,
abusing, and murdering innocent young victims,
the imaginative link between this stereotype and
Dutroux was easy to make. Perhaps responding to
public pressure, during one phase of the investigation
police began focusing their attention on the
Institut Abrasax, a college of black magic in a
village not far from Charleroi. The Institut is a
legal organization established in 1990 to teach
“harmful sorcery and initiation into Satanic rites.”
A poster of two of Marc Dutroux’s victims (AP
Photo/Pierre Thielmans)
Abrasax, a divinity with obscure origins, is often
invoked in ancient magical spells.
The college’s building housed a variety of
different neopagan groups and two Satanist
organizations, the Luciferian Initiation Order and
the Belgian Church of Satan. In an article that
appeared in the Sunday Times of London toward
the end of 1996, journalist Peter Conradi reported
that “five witnesses described black masses [there]
at which children were killed in front of audiences
said to have included prominent members of
Belgian society.”
Soon afterward, a Flemish newspaper
published a story that a number of officers in the
Charleroi municipal police force were members of
the Institut Abrasax. These policeman all testified
that the group was harmless. Nevertheless, the
college was raided by over a hundred investigators
and searched for some eight hours. The raid
turned up a number of strange items, including
magical tools, videos, and frozen blood.