A search was conducted Wednesday at the headquarters of Gallimard editions in Paris as part of the investigation opened against the writer Gabriel Matzneff for “rape of a minor” under the age of 15.
The search, revealed by Mediapart, began on Wednesday morning and ended in the early afternoon.
Investigators from the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP) are looking for written passages from the writer not appearing in his published works, a source close to the file told AFP.
Parts of his writings too “scandalous” in a chest
In an interview at the ex-Biffures site in 2008, Gabriel Matzneff declared that he had “self-censoring“of”crossings“of his writings that risked being”deemed especially outrageous“and put them on”safe in a bank vault“.
According to Mediapart, this safe was “located” by the investigators.
This is the first search at the headquarters of the editor of Gabriel Matzneff since the opening of the investigation on January 3, the day after the publication of the autobiographical novel “Le consent” by Vanessa Springora. She denounces her relationship under the influence of the writer when she was a minor.
The investigators had already visited Gallimard’s premises in January to look for the works of Gabriel Matzneff.
According to a source close to the file, confirming information from Mediapart, the investigators are also interested in Christian Giudicelli, his editor within Gallimard and traveling companion in the Philippines.
Search for victims
As part of this investigation, a call for witnesses was issued on Tuesday by the OCRVP. The Paris prosecutor Rémi Heitz explained that it was a question of avoiding that there are “forgotten victims”.
The editor Vanessa Springora was interviewed by the police on January 29, while seeing only a “symbolic significance” to that because of the prescription of the facts.
To date, she is the only woman to have publicly testified among the adolescent girls seduced by Gabriel Matzneff, whose behavior, described in his own books, has long been tolerated in the Parisian literary world. In 2013, he won the Renaudot essay prize.
Whoever said in a letter not to deserve “the awful portrait“published by Vanessa Springora said at the end of January on BFMTV”to regret“his past pedophile practices in Asia, while arguing that”at the time“,”nobody ever talked about crime“.
It is for some of his reactions to Vanessa Springora’s book, published between the end of December and the beginning of January in l’Obs, le Parisien and Express, that Gabriel Matzneff will be tried on September 28, 2021 in another procedure for “apology” pedophile acts before the 17th chamber of the Paris Criminal Court, which specializes in press and freedom of expression cases.
The writer was summoned to appear by a prevention association against pedophilia, the Blue Angel.
Archives: In the name of the law 1993
In 1993, the program Au nom de la loi de la RTBF confronted Gabriel Matzneff with his pedophile practices, his defense wavered.
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