Gabriel Matzneff will be tried for apology for aggravated rape in 2021

The Gabriel Matzneff case was therefore raised for the first time during a hearing before a criminal court on Wednesday in Paris. The 83-year-old French writer was summoned to appear before the 17th chamber, specializing in press affairs and freedom of expression, by L'Ange Bleu. This national association for the prevention and fight against pedophilia accuses Gabriel Matzneff of having committed the offense of apologizing for crime - namely rape of a minor under 15 years old - through his remarks made in several media, concomitantly at the exit from Vanessa Springora's indictment book.

As expected, the merits of the case were not discussed on Wednesday. It was a simple relay hearing at the end of which the date of the trial was fixed at September 28… 2021. “Greatness and misery of justice… There was no less distant date”, notes with a little bitterness Me Méhana Mouhou, lawyer for L'Ange Bleu. "Given the challenges of the case and the fight against pedophilia, this is not a good signal to send," he regrets.

Between now and September 28, 2021, there will be several bridge hearings, in particular to prevent prescription. As of Wednesday, the lawyer for L'Ange Bleu insisted on recalling how imperative the personal appearance of Gabriel Matzneff during the debates seemed to him. "He'll have to be there." I asked the prosecution to publicize its decision. The public prosecutor indicated that he intended that Mr. Matzneff be present ", confides Mr. Mouhou by indicating that the parquet floor could if necessary require the writer to attend the hearing where it will be long question of the work of Vanessa Springora .

Direct quotation procedure

In "The Consent", published on January 2, the editor accuses the writer of having abused her during their long intimate relationship started when she was only 13 years old. In particular, she depicts the influence of the famous novelist almost forty years older than her. Vanessa Springora was the first to testify among the young adolescent girls seduced by Gabriel Matzneff, whose behavior and sexual attraction for minors girls or boys, claimed and reported - sometimes bluntly - in several of his books, has long been tolerated in the Parisian literary world.

PODCAST. Gabriel Matzneff affair: how Vanessa Springora rebuilt herself through writing

The time of leniency is over. Despite the prescription of the facts reported in "The Consent", the prosecution opened a preliminary investigation for rape against a minor, a call for witnesses was launched Tuesday to identify other potential victims, and L'Ange Bleu is determined to obtain the Matzneff's conviction for apologizing for a crime, offense punishable by 5 years' imprisonment and a € 45,000 fine.

The association used the so-called direct citation procedure. The latter allows a victim, who believes he has suffered damage following an offense, to set in motion public action. Then instructs the criminal court to examine the case and decide. In the case of Gabriel Matzneff, the Blue Angel considers that the recent declarations of the author affect the work of the association which aims in particular to prevent the passage to the act of the pedophiles, via the organization of discussion groups.

"Not discernment"

The words targeted by the Blue Angel were made by Gabriel Matzneff in three media: the Obs, last December 26, Le Parisien, three days later, the Express website, January 2. In response to Vanessa Springora's book, the writer talks about their past relationship. In his way. He describes "passionate, luminous and burning loves", emphasizing their "beauty" or their "exceptional" character. In summary, he paints an idyllic picture in total contrast with the account of Springora in his book "hostile" "denigrating" and "intended to harm him".

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"With these words, Gabriel Matzneff presents, in a tender and favorable light, a relationship between an adult and a child as a freely consented and fulfilled romantic relationship", analyzes Me Méhana Mouhou, the penalist who wrote the direct quotation. According to the lawyer for L'Ange Bleu, the writer dresses up in beautiful love story what Vanessa Springora describes as the abuse of the fruit of an abuse of her vulnerability.

"A 15 year old minor does not have the discernment to measure the authenticity and the consequences of such a relationship and these sexual acts, which characterizes a moral constraint", underlines Me Mouhou again. In his eyes, the remarks incriminated by L'Ange Bleu constitute an apology for the crime of aggravated rape.

Numerous testimonies from "abstinent pedophiles"

Pending the hearing now set for September 2021, the association will continue to sharpen its arguments. And store ammunition. Méhana Mouhou says that L'Ange Bleu has already received numerous testimonies from "abstinent pedophiles". These men, who did not take action, claim that certain writings of Matzneff's work allowed them to blame their sexual fantasies with minors. "We intend to broadcast at trial the video of at least one of these testimonies," says Mouhou, adding that the person concerned will not be identifiable. The face-to-face meeting between L'Ange Bleu and the novelist promises to be tense.

In an interview published Tuesday in the New York Times, Gabriel Matzneff gets angry, indeed, against those who want to judge him. "Who are they to judge their fellow men? These associations for virtue, how do they sleep, what do they do in bed and with whom do they sleep, what are their secret and repressed desires? Asks the writer interviewed by the American daily newspaper on the Italian Riviera where he has taken refuge since the affair broke out.

At the end of January on BFMTV, he said that he "regretted" his past pedophile practices in Asia, while claiming that "at the time", "no one ever spoke of crime". In a letter, he declared that he did not deserve the "awful portrait" published by the editor.