Matzneff case: Michèle Barzach, former Minister of Health, heard by the police

Since January, the affair has been shaking up the very hushed world of publishing. Vanessa Springora publishes her book Le Consentement, where she describes the pedophile acts committed by Gabriel Matzneff. Behavior denounced for years but which took a new turn with the opening of a new investigation this winter. According to information from Le Monde , Michèle Barzach, former Minister of Health for Jacques Chirac during the first cohabitation, was heard on March 2 by the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP) as part of the 'case.

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By immersing themselves in the memories of Gabriel Matzneff, the police of this service responsible for the investigation into "rapes of minors under 15 years of age" discovered the role played by the former gynecologist in the 1970s. 'she practiced in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, she conscientiously prescribed the pill to young girls on whom the writer cast his sights.

[Michèle Barzach] at no time thought it necessary to lecture this 37 year old gentleman and his 15 year old mistress

Michèle Barzach acted with full knowledge of the facts

A role also confirmed to investigators by new testimony published in late March in the New York Times . Francesca Gee, now 62, denounces the yoke of the French author, with whom she would have lived a traumatic relationship for three years, and this from the age of 15 when he was 37. Gabriel Matzneff himself mentioned the name of Michèle Barzach in Elie et Phaéton , one of his diaries. After three months of relationship, in the fall of 1973, he decided to take Francesca Gee to a gynecologist "who agrees to prescribe the pill without telling her mother," he wrote.

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His contacts in Paris recommended Michèle Barzach, whose cabinet was then on avenue Félix-Faure. "Matzneff made an appointment with Michèle Barzach and took me to her office," reports Francesca Gee. The gynecologist "at no time thought it necessary to lecture this gentleman of thirty-seven years and his mistress of fifteen," says the author in his journal. "She immediately understood that we are a real couple, that we love each other . "

I was just a kid whose parents didn't care for, under the influence of an experienced predator

The girl will return there between five and six times, although at the time, the sale of contraceptive products to minors without parental permission is prohibited. "She never asked me questions, but at the time nobody could fault my relationship with Matzneff," says Francesca Gee. "When I was just a kid whose parents didn't care for, under the influence of an experienced predator . "

After the separation of Gabriel Matzneff with Francesca Gee, Michèle Barzach did not hesitate to prescribe the pill to another young relationship of the writer, "Marie-Elisabeth, 16 years old," he says in Les Soleils revolus . Now a member of the World Health Organization, the former gynecologist told the World, through her relatives, that she was acting in full knowledge of the facts.