I don’t think people that just go to France for tourism have any idea just how putrid the French are regarding sex and sexual crimes, it’s such a sewer of a society. I am not saying French people are all criminals, but you see so many repellent attitudes in French society – which can also be found in other countries, one might add. The French love to be blind to all matters of harassment, adultery, rape, and sexual abuse, and many support it as well, of course.

Daily Beast:

For decades, Gabriel Matzneff got a pass from French culture mavens as he extolled the pleasures of sex with underage boys and girls. No longer.

Erin Zaleski Published Jan. 19, 2020 5:07AM ET 

“Once you have held, kissed, caressed, possessed a 13-year-old boy, a girl of 15,” Matzneff once wrote, “everything else seems bland, heavy, insipid.”

Such candidly creepy musings weren’t discovered in secret journals or on a password-protected laptop in a basement safe. Matzneff is an acclaimed writer in France and the above sentence was in a book-length essay, Les moins de seize ans (The Under 16s), which was published in the mid-’70s. In it, Matzneff openly discussed his attraction to young teens, and described sex with children as “a holy experience, a baptismal event, a sacred adventure.”

He was even more blatant in his 1990 book, Mes amours décomposés (My Loves Deconstructed), in which he wrote about sexual relationships with kids between 12 and 16 years old, and described an afternoon spent watching child pornography involving children as young as ten. He was in his 50s at the time.

[You see that if you live in a society where society doesn’t push back, sexual predators just go further and further, obviously they feel there won’t be a push back or consequences, they are, in fact, being encouraged, the widespread acceptance of their vile minds and deeds is vividly declared.]

These kinds of writings would have resulted in, at the very least, an extensive police investigation in other parts of the world, but in France, where it is illegal for an adult to have sex with anyone under 15, Matzneff was never arrested.

[In a society like this, you have the cultural and psychological foundations for normalizing homosexuality – the French were already profoundly perverted and toxic, now they have the opportunity to claim it’s all normal and legit.]

On the contrary, he was venerated in literary and media circles alike, often appearing as a guest on prestigious talk shows, where, positioning himself as a sort of literary libertine, he would boast on air about his affinity for young teens.

Even more disturbing was how the hosts would egg him on, which was the case during a now-infamous broadcast of the literary TV program Apostrophes in 1990 when Matzneff appeared to promote Mes amours décomposés.

“Why do you specialize in high-schoolers, minettes [young chicks],” the respected journalist Bernard Pivot asked playfully. “And once they hit 20, what? They don’t interest you anymore?”

The lecherous man of letters replied that teens weren’t yet “hardened by life,” and that they were “nicer.” “A very young girl is much sweeter even if she very quickly becomes hysterical and just as crazy as she will be when she is older,” a smirking Matzneff explained.  One of these very young girls Matzneff was referring to was Vanessa Springora.

Now 47, the publishing house head was 14 when she was seduced by Matzneff in the ’80s, and has broken her silence in a shocking new book, Le Consentement (Consent). Just 120 pages long, Springora’s account nonetheless packs a punch as it sketches dramatically her alleged experiences with Matzneff—from their first meeting at a dinner party when she was 13 to the sexual relationship that followed, to the emotional and psychological fall-out she endured for years after it ended.

[I am so happy she got to publish her book – and yes, punch back.]

Abandoned by her father, Springora describes herself as intellectually precocious, and with an immense desire for validation from the opposite sex. Qualities, she recalls, that made her the perfect prey for the famous writer, who began pursuing her fervently, beginning with romantic letters, followed by an invitation to his studio apartment for pastries.

He called Springora his “darling child” and “beautiful schoolgirl,” claiming their love was “pure” and “rare” and that such liaisons had occurred throughout history, citing sexual relationships between adults and children in Ancient Greece, and Edgar Allen Poe’s marriage to 13-year-old Virginia Clem as examples. […]

Throughout the book Matzneff emerges as a narcissist and master manipulator, who, Springora would learn, not only had other very young “mistresses” during their “relationship,” but would also allegedly travel to the Philippines for sex with boys as young as 11.

Even after Springora mustered up the strength to extract herself from his clutches, he continued to harass her, going so far as publishing details of their encounter in his works, including notes exchanged between the two, as well as referring to her by her first name in televised interviews.

“As if his passage through my life hadn’t been devastating enough, he had to continue documenting, falsifying, recording, and forever engraving his misdeeds,” she writes.

[I think this is another very horrible aspect of sexual abuse – there is often such high levels of psychological and emotional violence.]

The reaction in France to Springora’s tell-all has been explosive—a veritable “#MeToo” moment for the French intellectual and publishing worlds, which, she writes, have long tolerated sexually predatory behavior toward minors.

[At least that is some progress.]

Although Matzneff might have been hauled off to jail in the United States, consent laws are hazy in France. Here until recently it was considered a “sexual infraction” for an adult to have sex with a child under 15, but not necessarily rape unless it was physically forced.

[In a country of sexuality pigs that’s to be expected, right? The legal system protects the abusers, not the children. Note that there is a cultural thing in France where they are always priding themselves of not being sexually prudish – which in practice just means how they love all forms of toxic and harmful sex and relationships.]

New legislation passed in 2018 aimed at strengthening child sexual abuse laws states that sex with anyone under 15 can be considered rape if the sex act was the result of “an abuse of vulnerability.” That is, if the adult exploited the minor’s lack of understanding to engage in sex.

A day after Springora’s book hit stores, French prosecutors announced that they were opening an investigation into “rape committed on a minor under 15” related to the allegations in Le Consentement. And, in an unprecedented move, the prestigious Gallimard publishing house, which released Matzneff’s latest book in November, has halted sales of his work. The kindle version of Les moins de seize ans is no longer available on Amazon, and Matzneff is also set to lose a special state pension for writers that he has received since 2002.

“A literary aura does not guarantee impunity,” French Cultural Minister Franck Riester said in a tweet. “I lend my full support to all victims who have had the courage to break the silence.”

[Now they say this. Isn’t it obvious French police have the same mindset as Matzneff given they had nothing about his open abuse of children up until now? And what about his victims in the Philippines?]