After new accusations against him, a second investigation into rape of a minor targeting the writer Gabriel Matzneff was opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office, the latter announced to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday, November 23, confirming information from RMC.

A woman in her fifties accuses the writer of having raped her several times between the ages of 4 and 13 and asked the Paris prosecutor’s office in October to interview her, in particular to warn about other children victims, according to her, of Mr. Matzneff. The investigations were entrusted on October 23 to the Minors Office (Ofmin). The first investigation, opened in January 2020 after the publication of the book Le Consentement, by Vanessa Springora, and which now brings together the “statements of several victims”, is currently being analyzed by the Paris juvenile prosecutor’s office.

These investigations, which are close to being closed, according to a source close to the case, should end with a dismissal of proceedings, the facts which could have been the subject of proceedings against Mr. Matzneff being prescribed. In this context, the counsel of Bérénice (the first name has been changed because she wishes to remain anonymous), adopted daughter of a “close friend” of Gabriel Matzneff, wrote on October 10 to the prosecution to request “the hearing-complaint » of their client so that she can be heard, file a complaint and provide the new elements that they have been able to collect in eighteen months of work.

To date, “the prosecution has not responded,” laments lawyer Rodolphe Costantino, who represents Bérénice with Marie Grimaud. Contacted by AFP, Emmanuel Pierrat, lawyer for the writer, now 87 years old, did not wish to comment on the news.

His “accomplice” adoptive father

According to the letter, revealed by RMC and to which AFP had access, Bérénice has been able, since her adoptive parents moved to an nursing home in September 2020, to find numerous documents “hidden” at their home: correspondence between the adoptive father and Gabriel Matzneff, personal and professional diaries… Their “discovery (…) authorized her to put into words memories and traumatic experiences that had until then been silently noisy”, explain her lawyers.

Bérénice also initiated “a dialogue with her adoptive father”, now dead. In their recorded exchanges, his father “testifies and confesses to facts of which he and certain of his friends, including Gabriel Matzneff, were the authors,” states the letter. Bérénice accuses her adoptive father, who was a doctor, of having been “complicit” in drugging her before being raped by Gabriel Matzneff as well as of having raped her himself, according to Mr. Costantino. “These are elements corroborated by his older brother” in a declaratory letter, underlines the lawyer.

Furthermore, a letter consulted by AFP establishes a link between the Springora family and that of Bérénice: in July 1986, Vanessa Springora’s mother wrote to Bérénice’s adoptive father to have him examine his daughter in his capacity as a doctor.

Other facts for which the prescription has not yet been established

The rapes denounced by Bérénice were allegedly committed in Paris, in a context of “social circles and influence, within which some of their members shared a certain idea of ??pedophilia or even shared a certain practice of it”, accuses the mail. More precisely, at the family home – the former private mansion of the Princess of Salm – where Gabriel Matzneff was “very regularly received”, in an apartment on rue de Varenne and in a room at the Pont-Royal hotel, in the 7th arrondissement .

If these facts are a priori prescribed, Bérénice was also “an eyewitness to sexual abuse, rape committed by Gabriel Matzneff and others on three children, also adopted by families from the same background” and whose prescription is not is not yet established, Mr. Costantino told AFP. Bérénice is also concerned that children could still be “in contact” with Gabriel Matzneff today, in particular a minor under the age of 15, whose father is close to the writer, according to her.