Elected environmentalists, allies of the mayor PS of Paris Anne Hidalgo, ask him to suspend from his functions his deputy for Culture Christophe Girard, heard in March in the investigation " for rape of a minor " which targets the writer Gabriel Matzneff.
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In a letter sent Sunday to the mayor of Paris and to which AFP had access, this Tuesday, July 21, the elected officials of the environmental group of Paris, who had allied themselves with Ms. Hidalgo between the two rounds of the municipal elections, ask for the “ Suspension ” of Mr. Girard and the “ opening of an investigation by the Inspectorate General of the City of Paris ”. They also intend to participate, alongside feminist associations, in a rally on Thursday at noon, on the sidelines of the first Paris Council of the new term, in front of the Town Hall, to demand his " departure ", with slogans the accusing personally.
Mr. Girard will for his part file a complaint " in the coming days " for defamation, denouncing " an activist retribution seeking to substitute the street court for the judicial court ", announced his lawyer Delphine Meillet in a statement. " These slogans are defamatory against Christophe Girard in that they assimilate him to an accomplice in child crime ", explains Me Meillet, recalling that his client " is not implicated in any judicial investigation " and was “ interviewed as a simple witness ”.
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The investigators interviewed in March Mr. Girard, secretary general of the Maison Yves-Saint Laurent between 1986 and 1987, a structure which provided financial support to the writer Gabriel Matzneff in the 1980s, according to several accounts.
"The City of Paris cannot take a position hostile to feminist demands"
The writer is targeted by an investigation for “ rape of minors ” opened by the Paris prosecutor's office after the publication in January of Vanessa Springora's autobiographical novel in which she describes the relationship under the influence that she maintained, when she was a minor , with the writer. “ Three years after MeToo, after the public discussion provoked by the publication of the work" Le Consentement "by Vanessa Springora, a few months after the terrible Caesar ceremony, a few days after the appointment of a minister who is the subject of an instruction for rape and sexual harassment, the City of Paris cannot, must not, take a position hostile to feminist demands. Our political coherence depends on it, ”write the elected ecologists.
Asked Monday, Anne Hidalgo's First Deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire, recalled that " there is no reproach that has been formulated (to Christophe Girard) since he has neither the status of assisted witness, nor of indictment ”, since his hearing. There is " no reason to exclude Christophe Girard from our team, for legal, moral and ethical reasons ", he added, asking to " be careful not to mix up all the subjects ".