A new preliminary investigation for “rape of a minor under 15” opened in October against Gabriel Matzneff

The writer Gabriel Matzneff is the target of a new investigation for “rape of a minor”. A woman, now in her fifties, claims to have been raped and sexually assaulted when she was 4 and until she was 13.

A new preliminary investigation for “rape of a minor under 15 years old” was opened in October by the Paris prosecutor’s office following a new accusation of rape against the writer Gabriel Matzneff, we learned on Thursday 23 November franceinfo from consistent sources.

This new accusation, which RMC had revealed in the morning of Thursday November 23 and which Franceinfo was able to confirm, therefore led the Paris prosecutor’s office to open a new preliminary investigation against the writer.

This new accusation comes from the adopted daughter of a close friend of Gabriel Matzneff, now aged around fifty. In a letter sent to the Paris prosecutor’s office on October 10, via her lawyers, she accused Gabriel Matzneff of rape and sexual assault when she was a child, from the ages of 4 to 13 in the 1980s. The woman explains having been the victim of sexual assaults and rapes on the part of the writer between 1977 and 1987.

In the letter sent to the prosecution, the lawyers explain that most of the acts denounced were committed at the family home, in a private hotel, an apartment and in a room at the Pont royal hotel in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. The facts that the fifty-year-old denounces are now prescribed.

Thursday, November 23, the Paris prosecutor’s office clarified to franceinfo that the investigations of this investigation were entrusted to the Minors’ Office (OFFMIN). “The applicant will therefore be heard in this context, in order to be able to specify the alleged facts. The investigations will relate both to their characterization and qualification and to the limitation periods with regard to their seniority”he explains.

An investigation into rape of a minor is already targeting Gabriel Matzneff in Paris: the prosecution opened it in January 2020 after the publication of the book The consent by Vanessa Springora who describes a relationship under the influence when she was 14 years old. This investigation is “closed”adds the Paris prosecutor’s office, but “still being analyzed by the Paris juvenile prosecutor’s office, in order to investigate whether there is any evidence that would have made it possible to interrupt the statute of limitations of the facts denounced.”