Launched on the hats of wheels, the investigation of Gabriel Matzneff seems today to slip for one of the accusers of the writer. In January 2020, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation after the publication of Vanessa Springora’s account, “Le Consentement”, in which she recounts the relationship in the 1980s between the teenager and a man nearly fifty years old. : her and the writer.
A year and a half later, Francesca Gee, denounces a certain mess in a book to be published on Tuesday. This British journalist of Italian origin, who worked mainly for the Reuters agency in Paris, also had a relationship with Gabriel Matzneff as a teenager, in the 1970s. She knew this man and his habits very well. She reveals in her story about Gabriel Matzneff, “The most murderous weapon”, that at the opening of the investigation, the prosecution had put in great resources. Officials from the Central Office for the Repression of Violence Against Persons (OCRVP) quickly heard her as a witness. A police officer told him at the beginning of 2020: “We are eleven in total and three, four, five full-time in this business”.
The investigation is moving towards a classification without follow-up
Little news since then. Francesca Gee only knows that the investigators, after having seized from her publishers all the literature published by a writer now aged 85, are carrying out a Benedictine work to find possible more recent victims of her taste for “the less than sixteen years ”, as he titled a 1974 essay. They could not find any at this stage, say judicial and police sources.
Unless there is a rebound, the investigation is moving, due to prescription, towards a classification without continuation, intervening in the coming months, according to a source close to the file. Another source close to the file specifies that there are still texts to be analyzed. The writer will be heard once this work is completed, but not taken into custody, unless the investigators find elements to reproach him with.
Francesca Gee had tried to alert on the writer in 1994 already
Francesca Gee is not surprised, but sad, by this announced outcome. “The investigation is bogged down… It doesn’t surprise me. When I went to testify in Nanterre, I immediately said that they would not find a victim ”. “I was not expecting much from the criminal investigation because I knew very well that it had been years since Matzneff was doing nothing, or, in any case, that he was no longer telling it”, adds -she.
Francesca Gee’s self-published story could not find a publisher. Regarding the functioning of Gabriel Matzneff, it nevertheless provides a useful complement to that of Vanessa Springora at Grasset editions. Neither of them lodged a complaint. But “there have been multiple complaints, probably dozens. I don’t know how many, but a lot of parents have complained, ”according to the former journalist. “And he benefited from support which for me remains incomprehensible”.
Twice, in 1994 and 2004, the one who defines herself as “whistleblower” tried to explode the affair, by presenting manuscripts to publishers. She came up against, for reasons that were never explained to her, with refusals that she recounts in “The most murderous weapon”. The story dissects the personality of a man who suffered late opprobrium, but who is still supported today by a few patrons jealous of their anonymity. “In my opinion, nothing has changed. What has changed for him? He no longer lives in the 5th [arrondissement de Paris], he lives in Italy, and there are people who pay for that, ”she emphasizes.