A new accuser of Matzneff deplores that the investigation “gets bogged down”

A new accuser of the French writer Gabriel Matzneff denounces in a book the waste of the judicial investigation against this claimed pedophile, which arrives far too late and which is moving towards a classification without continuation because of prescription.

Former British journalist of Italian origin, who worked mainly for Reuters in Paris, Francesca Gee recounts in The deadliest weapon, self-published and which appears on Tuesday, having had a relationship with Gabriel Matzneff when she was 15, in the 1970s.

This publication comes eighteen months after that of story by Vanessa Springora, The consent, recounting her relationship under the influence in the 1980s, when she was a teenager, with this man aged almost fifty years, who had led the Parisian justice to open an investigation for rape of minors against Gabriel Matzneff.

The 85-year-old writer who has long enjoyed tolerance from part of the intelligentsia and the media in France has recounted in numerous books his self-proclaimed taste for minors and for sex tourism with young boys in Asia.

In her book, Francesca Gee explains that she was quickly heard as a witness by the Central Office for the Repression of Violence Against Persons (OCRVP), which devotes considerable resources to the investigation, with several full-time police officers on this case.

Towards the prescription

But since then, little news. Francesca Gee only knows that the investigators, after having seized from her publishers all the literature published by the elderly writer, are carrying out a Benedictine work to find possible more recent victims of her taste for “those under sixteen”, such as he had titled a 1974 essay. They found none at this stage, legal and police sources told AFP.

Unless there is a rebound, the investigation is moving, because of prescription (that is to say because of the time elapsed in this case), towards a classification without follow-up planned in the coming months, according to a source close to the case.

Asked by AFP, Francesca Gee is not surprised, but sad, by this announced outcome. “The investigation is bogged down … It doesn’t surprise me. When I went to testify, I immediately said that they would not find a victim ”.

“I was not expecting much from the criminal investigation because I knew very well that it had been years since Matzneff was doing nothing, or, in any case, that he was no longer telling it”, adds -she.

“Dozens” of complaints

Neither Francesca Gee nor Vanessa Springora have lodged a complaint. But “there have been multiple complaints, probably dozens. I don’t know how many, but a lot of parents have complained, ”according to the former journalist. “And he benefited from support which for me remains incomprehensible”.

Twice, in 1994 and 2004, the one who defines herself as “whistleblower” tried to explode the affair, by presenting manuscripts to publishers. She came up against, for reasons that have never been explained to her, refusals that she recounts in The deadliest weapon, self-published.

The story dissects the personality of a man who suffered late opprobrium, but who is still supported today by a few anonymous patrons. “In my opinion, nothing has changed. What has changed for him? He no longer lives in the 5th [arrondissement de Paris], he lives in Italy, and there are people who pay for that, ”she emphasizes.

His testimony comes as the French intellectual and cultural milieu has been shaken since the beginning of the year by a wave of accusations of sexual assault and incest, prompting an unprecedented release of speech on subjects long overlooked.

A few weeks after the publication in January of a book by Camille Kouchner accusing of incest the political scientist Olivier Duhamel, senior official at the prestigious Parisian school Science Po and president of the very elitist club of the Century, the artist Claude Lévêque, the actor Richard Berry or even the television producer Gérard Louvin and her husband were in turn accused of rape by relatives, minors at the time. The latter dispute these accusations.

Bookstore success with nearly 300,000 copies sold in five weeks, The Big Family, by Camille Kouchner, also triggered thousands of anonymous testimonies on Twitter, under the hashtag #Metooinceste.

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