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A30 PEOPLE & ARTS
Monday 13 January 2020
France's #MeToo: Book on

child-sex writer prompts outcry

By JOHN LEICESTER grooming her until he was shock essay first published
Associated Press habitually waiting at her in 1974. For some, those
PARIS (AP) — He was a school gates so he could changes included permis-
middle-aged French au- take her away for sex in his sive attitudes to sex, even
thor becoming known, flat or a hotel. with minors.
even celebrated, for writ- Matzneff has defended France's trail-blazing 20th-
ing about sex with children. himself in an essay, which century thinkers Jean-Paul
She was a fragile 14-year- the L'Express magazine Sartre and Simone de
old, too young to fore- published in full. He wrote Beauvoir, future Foreign
This photo taken Thursday, Jan. 2, 2020 shows the book "Le see the damage she says that he will not read Sprin- Minister Bernard Kouch-
Consentement" (Consent) by Vanessa Springora and displayed was done to her life by his gora's book, describing it ner and dozens of others
in a Boulogne Billancourt bookstore, outside Paris. predatory grip on her body as "a dagger to the heart" joined Matzneff in signing a
Associated Press and mind. Now a grown that is "intended to harm 1977 petition, published in
woman, Vanessa Sprin- me, to destroy me" and the Le Monde newspaper,
gora is causing a literary, which "tries to make me out that defended three men
legal and cultural storm in as a pervert, a manipula- detained for three years
France with her explosive tor, a predator, a bastard." ahead of their trial for sexu-
tell-all book that alleges, He described his relation- al activity with minors.
in cutting detail, an under- ship with Springora when "Three years of prison for
age and destructive sexual she was "my young lover" caresses and kisses, that's
relationship with French as one of the "passionate enough," said the peti-
writer Gabriel Matzneff, loves" of his life. tion, which Matzneff later
now in his eighties. Springora says it was claimed he wrote.
The publication this month Matzneff's own writings that Child-protection activists
and quick commercial helped break his hold on want to believe that the re-
success of "Consent" is her. vulsion sparked by Springo-
also being hailed by child- While he was away on a ra's book shows that French
protection activists as a trip, she read his fetid de- attitudes are changing.
possible watershed mo- scriptions of having sex with They're also gratified by
ment for France. The book other children, works he the refocused attention on
has ignited renewed de- had told her not to look at. Matzneff, a writer who had
bates about the country's They punctured her illusions been allowed to slowly
permissive attitudes to- that their relationship was a slide into relative obscu-
ward sex with minors and special romance. rity, becoming unknown
soul-searching about why "His books were populated to many younger readers
Matzneff was long cele- by other 15-year-old Lo- and seemingly freed of the
brated in Paris. litas," Springora writes, re- risk of the legal and finan-
"This is a very important calling how the blinders fell cial entanglements he now
book. It's France's #MeToo from her eyes. "This man faces.
moment," says Homayra was no good. He was, in "It was very hard to watch
Sellier, an advocate for fact, what we are taught him being praised to the
child victims of sexual vio- to fear from childhood: an skies by everyone," says
lence with the group Inno- ogre." Sellier, who wrote to then-
cence in Danger. Many other prominent President Francois Hollande
Matzneff is rapidly becom- French figures — belatedly in protest after Matzneff
ing a pariah in the wake — now say likewise. won the prestigious Ren-
of the book's publication Jacques Toubon told the audot literary prize, in its
and is now the target of a Quotidien talk show that essay category, with few
new rape probe by Paris he regrets his decision as complaints in 2013. "It was
prosecutors. Yet for years, culture minister in 1995 to shocking. It is shocking. Ev-
Matzneff was a frequent decorate the writer with eryone looked the other
guest on French TV and France's Arts and Letters way for 30-40 years."
radio. He was awarded a medal. The current culture Springora says that award
prestigious literary prize as minister, Franck Riester, was "unbearable" for her
recently as 2013 and hon- now says Matzneff should and was one of the triggers
ored by the French govern- no longer receive the an- that prompted her to write
ment with medals and an nual state allowance for about her experiences and
annual allowance. which he is eligible as a the adults she blames for
But for the teenage Sprin- renowned author, calling not protecting her as a vul-
gora, Matzneff was the him "the eulogist of pedo- nerable adolescent. They
50-year-old for whom she criminality." include her mother, who
developed a schoolgirl While Springora's book is fly- knew of the relationship,
crush after her mother, ing off the shelves, already her absentee father, the
who worked in publish- in its seventh printing after French police, and others.
ing, dragged her to a din- a week on sale, publish- Now working as a literary
ner party. There, she met ers who for years backed editor, the 47-year-old says
and was bowled over by Matzneff are running in the she also struggles to under-
the writer who seemed to other direction. They are stand why Matzneff's pub-
have eyes only for her. She withdrawing his writings, in- lishers marketed his most
alleges he then set about cluding "The under 16s," a nauseating writings. q