This is from Forbes:

French Paedophile Writer Gabriel Matzneff Says It Was No Crime At The Time

No one saw pedophilia as a crime in the 1970s says French writer Gabriel Matzneff, who is being investigated for child sex abuse after the release of a book by one of his victims.

For the first time since the scandal broke early this month, the once acclaimed writer has spoken out, expressing regret over his pedophile acts in the Philippines with young boys and girls.

“No one thought of the law, there was no law,” he said in an interview with BFM TV Wednesday. Matzneff said he regretted the acts with hindsight.

“A tourist, a stranger, should not behave like that. One must, as an adult, turn one's head, resist temptation.”

Matzneff–who is hiding out in Italy–did not show the same repentance to Vanessa Springora, whose book Le Consentement (Consent) broke decades of deafening silence on the man described as France’s Jeffrey Epstein. In the shocking memoir, Springora recounts how she was seduced by Matzneff when she was 13, and he almost 50.

With his face hidden to the camera, Matzneff said he felt “socially destroyed.” The state wanted him to commit suicide he claimed, “It’s really the Soviet Union! Come on, Matzneff, to the gulag.”

Matzneff said he did not want to read Springora's book. "I will never say anything against her because she is a bright person," he said.

French sex abuse scandal writer Gabriel Matzneff in black hat
One highly acclaimed French writer Gabriel Matzneff is now at the heart of a child sex abuse ... [+] CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
The day after its publication, the Paris prosecutor launched an investigation into Matzneff for rape of a minor. The probe comes 45 years after Matzneff published an essay, Les moins de seize ans (The Under 16s) in 1974, confessing his appetite for young girls and boys.

Now 83, his child sexual abuse exploits were well-documented in several of his books and diaries. Despite being public knowledge for decades, it is only now that the “Affaire Matzneff” is causing an outcry in France.

In Le Consentement, Vanessa Springora tells of Matzneff’s “pedophile grip on her” as a teenager. His “status of writer protected this predator," she writes.

“For so many years, my dreams have been filled with murder and revenge. Until the day when the solution finally presents itself, so clearly: to take the hunter to his own trap, to lock him in a book.”

Springora was the victim of a “triple predation: sexual, literary and psychic,” said a France Inter report.

In a recent letter to Le Parisien Matzneff spoke of the book’s “unjust and excessive attacks,” and "the beauty of the love” he and Vanessa Springora experienced.

France’s equality minister Marlene Schiappa says the Matzneff case has exposed "major dysfunction" in French society, and has promised there will be no more safe refuge for child sex abusers. "There are Matzneffs everywhere, and we have to denounce them."

Until his brutal outing, Matzneff enjoyed decades of literary impunity from his acts. All that time, he has remained a French literary world darling, scooping up accolades and awards.

The revelations of Matzneff’s pedophile practices are causing “a shock wave,” a “generational earthquake” according to French financial newspaper Les Echos. “At least as strong as the deafening silence that surrounded the publication of his writings for almost fifty years.”

Honored rather than vilified. Despite boasting for decades of sexual exploits with boys and girls, ... [+] GETTY IMAGES
Decades Of Deafening Silence And Literary Impunity
When Canadian writer Denise Bombardier tackled Matzneff in 1990, on the set of renowned French literary talk show Apostrophes, she was called “a stupid bitch” and stupid in French publishing circles and the media.

Horrified at Matzneff’s literary boasting of sex exploits including sodomy with teenagers, Bombardier accused him of “attracting young girls with his literary reputation instead of bonbons.” Clearly she was way ahead of her time for France.

Even highly respected host, Bernard Pivot–a doyen on the French cultural scene– jovially questioned Matzneff about his sexual attraction for "under 16s," as the audience giggled.

Bombardier is now denouncing the "cowardice" of French justice, for taking over 30 years to open an investigation into the rape allegations against this serial “collector of young babes.” That’s how Pivot jokingly described him on his show. “And once they hit 20 ... They don’t interest you anymore?” Pivot asked. All this happened in another “epoch.” A time when “literature came before morals,” Pivot tweeted recently.

For Bombardier, the collective silence also shows the complicity of the legal milieu, who “dared not touch these characters who controlled part of the French literary environment."




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