A second investigation for rape of minors was opened in Paris against the French writer Gabriel Matzneff, accused of pedophilia following the revelations in 2020 of the publisher and author Vanessa Springora, after new accusations from a fifty-year-old, indicated Thursday the prosecution.
The investigations were launched on October 23 after a letter from this woman sent to the prosecution, claiming that she was raped by the writer from the age of 4 to 13.
The first investigation targeting Gabriel Matzneff, opened after the publication of the book The consentby Vanessa Springora, is currently being analyzed by the Paris juvenile prosecutor’s office.
The investigations in the second investigation “will relate both to the characterization and qualification” of the facts and to the limitation periods, the alleged facts dating back “several decades”, added the prosecution.
The lawyer of the now 86-year-old writer, Emmanuel Pierrat, did not react immediately.
The woman behind the second investigation accuses her adoptive father, who was a doctor, of having been “complicit” in drugging her before her rapes by Gabriel Matzneff, and of having raped her himself, according to her lawyer, Rodolphe Costantino.
The acts were allegedly committed in Paris, in a context of “social circles and influence”.
She also says she was “an eyewitness to sexual abuse and rape” committed by Gabriel Matzneff “on three children, also adopted by families from the same background,” told Agence France-Presse Me Costantino.
Her client is also concerned that children could still be “in contact” with Gabriel Matzneff today, in particular a minor whose father is close to the writer.
The first to testify publicly against Gabriel Matzneff, an author long celebrated by the French literary community and awarded the Renaudot essay prize in 2013, Vanessa Springora recounted in The consent their affair, which began when she was not even 14 and he was almost 50.
The author, who has long benefited from tolerance from part of the intelligentsia and the media in France, has himself claimed to be a “pedophile”, recounting at length, in numerous works, his relationships with minors and his taste for sex tourism in Asia.
Since then, he has said he “regrets” his past pedophile practices in Asia, while arguing that “at the time”, “no one ever talked about a crime”.