A cumbersome friendship. One month before the municipal elections, Christophe Girard, Culture Assistant for the city of Paris and candidate in the 18th arrondissement, would no doubt have preferred his meetings with Gabriel Matzneff to be overlooked. In a survey published Tuesday and entitled A pedophile writer - and the French elite - on the dock , the New York Times says that for more than twenty years the former socialist mayor of the 4th district would have been among the supporters of the writer under investigation for rape of minor.
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Christophe Girard, then secretary general of Yves Saint Laurent, is said to have paid the bills for the hotel where Gabriel Matzneff secretly found Vanessa Springora, author of the Consent . The former mayor of the 4th arrondissement says he is “ upset and enlightened ” by this work, in which the editor tells of the influence exerted on her by the author when she was a minor.
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I didn't know that Matzneff was looking to escape the juvenile brigade
Christophe GirardIn his diary, Gabriel Matzneff is full of praise for the " charming Christophe Girard ". " This employee of Yves Saint Laurent, whom I saw the other day, called me this morning to tell me that their Foundation would now take charge of my hotel bill ," he wrote. Christophe Girard does not deny. In a press release published on February 12, he explains that " according to the instructions of Pierre Bergé ", co-founder of the fashion house and companion of Yves Saint Laurent, he would have provided " support for the payment of accommodation costs ". Support that would have benefited from other artists in " momentary difficulty " - including Marguerite Duras or Hervé Guibert.
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- Christophe Girard (@cgirard) February 12, 2020Did Christophe Girard ignore that the police had summoned Gabriel Matzneff in 1986, after having received anonymous letters indicating that Vanessa Springora, then aged 14, lived with the writer in his fifties? In an interview with the Parisian , Christophe Girard assures that he did not " know " that the author " sought to escape the juvenile brigade ".
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The story does not end there. In 2002, then already Assistant to Culture of the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, Christophe Girard would have sent a letter to the National Book Center, in order to favor the granting of a grant to the author. An intervention of which he says he has only a vague memory. “ I think Gabriel Matzneff asked me for a letter of support. It can exist. At City Hall, we looked for it in the archives, but no one found it, ”he pleads.
We didn't support him because he was a pedophile, but because he was a writer in difficulty
Christophe GirardChristophe Girard explains that he did not intervene to help Gabriel Matzneff to escape justice, but to get him out of precariousness. " We did not support him because he was a pedophile, but because he was a writer in difficulty ", argues the elected Parisian. According to him, the writer exaggerates their degree of proximity. “ I had to have dinner three or four times with him in thirty years. He says that I am one of his best friends. It is a bit excessive, ”says the man who has long considered the author as a“ well-bred novel character ”.
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" If, today, Gabriel Matzneff calls me, I will take him on the phone, but I will not help him ", explains the one who describes pedophilia as " monstrous ". " But I am also of a generation which considers that it is necessary to separate the work from the author ", he nuances. Today, deputy in charge of Culture with Anne Hidalgo, he says he is in any case " disgusted " to see that these revelations on his relations with the author of the Under-sixteen years come a few days before the municipal elections.
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