"You have been victims or witnesses of sexual acts, likely to concern this investigation, the judicial police want to guarantee that it is mobilized and is perfectly available to welcome your word". As part of the investigation opened for rape of a minor under 15 years old against the French writer Gabriel Matzeneff, the Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz, launched on Tuesday 11 February a call for witnesses. The goal: to find alleged victims.
The call to witness indicates a telephone number (06 83 67 43 57). "Regardless of the time, regardless of the circumstances or who may be involved, the police encourage everyone who has information to testify."
"Identify all other possible victims"
On Tuesday morning, Rémy Heitz announced on Europe 1 that a call for witnesses would be launched during the day to avoid there being "forgotten victims".
The investigation had been opened by the prosecution on January 3, the day after the publication of the autobiographical novel "The Consent" in which the editor Vanessa Springora denounced her relationship under the influence of the writer Gabriel Matzneff when she was a minor, in the 80 years.
"Beyond the facts described by Vanessa Springora", the investigation will endeavor "to identify all other possible victims who may have suffered similar offenses on national territory or abroad", had already specified Mr. Heitz in its press release announcing the opening of the investigation.
📣 Call to witnesses for the investigation of Gabriel #Matzneff 📣
To share around you! pic.twitter.com/YT4zhE3C1O
The editor was heard at the end of January by the investigators but the facts concerning her are prescribed.
In addition to the "manifestation of the truth" and the verification concerning the prescription of the facts, "the approach of the Paris prosecutor's office" when it comes to minors, is to "ensure" by opening an investigation "that he there are no forgotten victims, "said Rémy Heitz on Europe 1.
"If there have been other victims", it is necessary "to allow them to speak, to take their word into account and to prosecute the perpetrator," he added, explaining the reason for be of the call for witnesses.
Vanessa Springora was the first to testify 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.
Gabriel Matzneff gives names
In an interview published Tuesday in the New York Times, Gabriel Matzneff, 83, is angry with 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 on the Italian Riviera where he has taken refuge since the affair broke out.
The daily recalls that before his blacklisting, the writer, aged 83, had been received at the Élysée in 1984 by President François Mitterrand, that he had frequented Jean-Marie Le Pen or even that 'he had benefited from "the generosity" of Yves Saint Laurent and his companion Pierre Bergé. The title of the New York Times article is "a pedophile writer - and the French elite - on the dock."
In an interview broadcast at the end of January on BFMTV, he said he "regretted" his past pedophile practices in Asia, while claiming that "at the time", "no one ever spoke of crime". In a letter, he said he did not deserve the "awful portrait" published by the editor.
With AFP
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