Regina Louf was the first of 11 people to come forward to talk of their harrowing experiences at the hands of Belgium's paedophile networks.

She told investigators how, from her earliest childhood, she'd been used in a paedophile ring. This had included her grandmother, her parents and a pimp - Tony.

She now says "It was big business - blackmail - there was a lot of money involved." She knew, she said, that sessions were secretly filmed without the clients' knowledge.

Regina recalled judges and politicians in this horrific house

'Influential people were involved'

In 1996, she named and described in great detail, to a specially assembled police team, the people and places involved in the paedophile ring.

Senior judges, one of the country's most powerful politicians - now dead - and a very influential banker were included.

Dutroux and Nihoul

One of the regular organisers of these parties, she said, was the man she knew as 'Mich', Jean Michel Nihoul. The sessions not only involved sex, they included sadism, torture and murder; and again, she described in detail, the place, the victims and how they were killed.

She also claimed the young Marc Dutroux was there.

"At these parties Nihoul was a sort of party beast while Dutroux was more on the side."

Was Nihoul the brains behind the network?

Regina Louf's testimony was vitally important.

If true, it placed Dutroux and Nihoul, suspected accomplices in the latest child abductions, together at the scene of similar crimes 10 years before.

Read more:

Belgium's X-Files:
an Olenka Frenkiel investigation
Sunday 5th May 2002 on BBC Two at 1915 BST

Reporter: Olenka Frenkiel
Producer: Michael Simkin
Series Producer: Simon Finch
Editor: Fiona Murch