Product Description

On May 28, 1996, Sabine Dardenne was kidnapped by one of Europe’s most infamous pedophiles, Marc Dutroux. She was twelve years old. This international best-seller is her courageous and uplifting testimony.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #432612 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
...brave, difficult, honest, and furiously unsentimental. -- Mail on Sunday

About the Author
Sabine Dardenne was Marc Dutroux's last victim and was held prisoner for eighty days. In 2004, eight years after her kidnapping, she testified at his trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Customer Reviews

Engrossing and Fascinating
"I Choose To Live" describes the ordeal that Sabine Dardenne went through living as the captive of a pedophile for 80 days.

Sabine is such an honest, brave, and inspirational person that to read in her own words about the ordeal and how she dealt with it was very inspirational and very fascinating. I couldn't put the book down and really found myself marvelling at her courage and her refusal to look at herself as a victim.

I never imagined that there were people like her. People who could go through the most horrible abuse and come out strong and well-grounded. Hats off to her.

By the way, there weren't any detailed descriptions of the rapes so that made it easier to read (although there were some disturbing parts to the book, of course).

The Will to Survive
On 28 May 1996 twelve-year-old Sabine Dardenne was kidnapped by the man who turned out to be one of Belgium's most heinous paedophiles. She was his prisoner for eighty long days.
'I need to write this book for three reasons: so that people stop giving me strange looks and treating me like a curiosity; so that no one asks me any more questions ever again; and so that the judicial system never again frees a paedophile for "good behaviour".'
'The Dutroux Affair' shook the whole of Europe. In the middle of the immense machinery of investigation and justice there was Sabine Dardenne hrself, Dutroux's last victim. She was held captive for eighty days, and astonishly she survived. Far from sensationalizing the horror, her story, dignified and restrained, is ultimately uplifting. Says Sabine Dardenne: 'I choose to live'. -- from book's back cover

Unadorned, honest account of 80 terrible days
While reading this, and afterward, I just wanted to say to Sabine - Forgive Yourself! You are not the author of anyone elses fate. In now way were the author of anyone elses fate - Laetitia was not Kidnapped because of what you said. Dutroux was a horrendous excuse for a human being and did what he wanted with no reference to anyone elses needs. Your 12 year old terror and loneliness was just another excuse to weave a tale of guilt around you!

This is the bare and honest story of Sabine Dardenne, one of two survivors of Belgian paedophile, Marc Dutroux. She spent 80 days in his captivity, and while the details are (thankfully) not given in detail, the sheer horror of being a 12 year old child and subjected to the physical and emotional torment she suffered is enough to horrify.

Sabine was snatched off the street by Dutroux, the Slug as she later calls him, and his wife. That a woman with children could be complicit in this appalls me but she was responsible for at least two earlier deaths of young children kidnapped by Dutroux when she failed to feed them. But Sabine was not aware of this.

Taken by Dutroux she was forced to live in a small cell and basement, eat horrendous food, and assaulted by him. She was not allowed to wash often nor was her cell or environment kept clean so she gradually became more and more unkempt. Once when Dutroux went away there was a power cut, trapped in her stinking cell, 6 feet by 3 feet wide and not tall enough for a short 12 year old to stand up in. She panicked, her only light and ventilation failed - a 12 year old girl alone. Luckily it came on again shortly afterwards.

In her loneliness and desparation she wrote long letters to her mother. Dutroux had told her that He was holding her safe from a gang of terrible men, torturers who would take pleasure in killing her in terrible ways, and that she should never call out and onlyrespond to his voice. She believed these stories, she also believed him when he said her parents weren't cooperating with them over paying a ransom, they couldn't afford it and other disgusting lies which made her desparate.

In her loneliness she asked Dutroux for a friend, an idle suggestion, but one be must have been already considering and enjoying. Soon afterwards he turned up with another child, Laetitia kidnapped from another Belgian town. She was to be directly the author of his downfall. IN his stupidity he was seen, along with his van and other details. He was tracked down and 6 days later the girls were rescued.

The brain washing of Sabine was so complete she could not comprehend that Laetitia had seen missing posters of her in her town. Nor really understand that her family, in fact teh whole of Belgium was desperate to find her.

Painfully Sabine catalogues the post kidnap years. The troubled home life which followed, the typical teenage behaviour, the struggle for acceptance which would probably have happened with her family whether or not she had been kidnapped. She also talks about the inability to control what was being talked about in the press, the lies which were perpetrated and her anger at Dutroux and his lies which were constant and inventive.

The final part is the court case, which was all about discovery - and her continuing her life.

Sabine, you are a survivor. Thank you for righting this book, you are an extraodinary person.