More than a year and a half of investigation for rape of minors on Gabriel Matzneff, arriving much too late: one of the accusers of the writer, Francesca Gee, denounces a certain mess in a book to be published Tuesday.
When the publication in January 2020 of the account of Vanessa Springora,
Le Consentement
, recounting the relationship in the 1980s between the teenager and a man aged almost fifty years, the Paris prosecutor's office had opened this investigation.
To read also "Everything except love": another accuser denounces the system and the protections of Gabriel Matzneff
And he had put in big resources, reveals Francesca Gee.
This former British journalist of Italian origin, who worked mainly for the Reuters agency in Paris, knows it to have had, she also explains, a relationship with Gabriel Matzneff as a teenager, in the 1970s. .
She knew this man and his habits very well.
And officials from the Central Office for the Repression of Violence Against Persons (OCRVP) quickly heard her as a witness.
A policeman quoted in his book on Gabriel Matzneff,
The Deadliest Weapon
, told him at the start of 2020:
"We are eleven in total and three, four, five full-time on this affair."
Towards the prescription
Little news since then.
Francesca Gee only knows that the investigators, after having seized from her publishers all the literature published by a writer now aged 85, are carrying out a Benedictine work to find possible more recent victims of her taste for
"the less than sixteen years ”
, as he titled a 1974 essay.
In "The Deadliest Weapon", Francesca Gee intends to dissect the "Matzneff" system.
Catherine GUGELMANN / Opal
"They have not found any at this stage,"
judicial and police sources told AFP.
Unless there is a rebound, the investigation is moving, due to prescription, towards a classification without continuation, intervening in the coming months, according to a source close to the file.
Another source close to the matter specifies that there are still texts to be analyzed.
The writer will be heard once this work is completed, but not taken into custody, unless the investigators find elements to reproach him with.
Read also Gabriel Matzneff will not be tried for apologizing for pedocriminality
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 in Nanterre, I immediately said that they would not find a victim, ”she
explains.
Before adding:
"I wasn't 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. . "
Francesca Gee's self-published story could not find a publisher.
Regarding the functioning of Gabriel Matzneff, it nevertheless provides a useful complement to that of Vanessa Springora at Grasset editions.
Neither of them have lodged a complaint.
“But there have been multiple complaints, probably dozens. I don't know how many, but a lot of parents have lodged a complaint
, argues a 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, with refusals that she decided to tell today in
The Deadliest Weapon
.
The story dissects the personality of a man who suffered late opprobrium, but who is still supported today by a few patrons jealous of their anonymity.
“In my opinion, nothing has changed.
What has changed for him?
He no longer lives in the 5th [arrondissement of Paris], he lives in Italy, and there are people who pay for that ”
.