Paris (AFP)
Secretary of State for Child Protection Adrien Taquet said Tuesday that "the end of impunity" for pedophiles "does not stop" at the revelation by an editor of his relationship under the influence of writer Gabriel Matzneff, when she was 14 years old.
"I wish that the end of the silence, the end of the impunity that perhaps marks the beginning of this affair, does not stop there and that we all continue to fight together against violence against children in our country" , said Mr Taquet on Europe 1.
The self-proclaimed taste of the 83-year-old writer for the "under 16s" and for sex tourism with young boys in Asia had so far caused little eyebrow. The release, scheduled for Thursday, of the book "Consent" by Vanessa Springora, 47, seems to be changing the situation.
"I think it is important to highlight the Matzneff case but, beyond that, (...) it was time to put the subject of pedophilia more generally in the headlines," continued the Secretary of State.
"We must deal with, (...) we must condemn morally, perhaps from a judicial point of view", this case, while "tens of thousands of children in our country each year" are victims of sexual violence, he said.
Asked about the allowance paid by the National Book Center (CNL) to certain writers to compensate for the financial difficulties linked to old age or illness and of which Gabriel Matzneff is a beneficiary, Mr. Taquet said he understood that it could "shock" .
But, he added, "what is interesting - beyond these elements which obviously need to be clarified - is to try to understand why such a feeling of impunity could have made this genre possible. facts, that kind of writing 20 years ago, 30 years ago. " "How has nothing happened since then?"
"Why did we put this story in a well hidden part of our collective memory?" He insisted.
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