Morkhoven Workgroup

The Morkhoven Workgroup was an NGO that played a central role in exposing the international child pornography network operated through the Apollo Bulletin Board Service from Zandvoort, Netherlands. Private investigator Marcel Vervloesem investigated the disappearance of Manuel Schadwald for the Morkhoven Workgroup, tracing connections from Lothar Glandorf to Gerrit-Jan Ulrich and the Apollo BBS in June 1998. When Ulrich handed Vervloesem encoded disks containing evidence of the network, Vervloesem passed them to his colleague Gina Pardaens-Bernaer within the Morkhoven Workgroup, who made copies before they were given to police.¹

Pardaens-Bernaer identified a perpetrator linked to the Marc Dutroux network in snuff film materials from the Apollo Disks before her death in November 1998. Members of the Morkhoven Workgroup also believed they had identified Katrien de Cuyper in pornographic photos found on the Apollo Disks. In February 2001, the Morkhoven Workgroup tracked down a transvestite named Robert Jan Warmerdam in Amsterdam, who claimed to have known both Robbie Van Der Plancken and Marc Dutroux, leading to further revelations about the connections between Dutch and Belgian trafficking networks. Vervloesem was later convicted by an Antwerp court in 2008 for publication of child pornography and sexual abuse of three minors, which allowed facts concerning the Apollo investigation to be dismissed ad hominem.¹