Denise Bombardier, who died Tuesday at the age of 82, made an impact one night in March 1990 during Bernard Pivot’s program Apostrophes.
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In front of two to three million viewers, the Quebecer alone defied Gabriel Matzneff, whose writings praised sexual relations with children and young people, and believed that literature “cannot be used as an alibi”.
- Listen to Josée Legault’s testimony about Denise Bombardier QUB radio :
She had yelled her anger at him, worried about the writer’s petty accomplishments, and believed that had he not had “a literary aura” he would have had “a right to justice.”
A video archive of that exchange went viral when Vanessa Springora published a story (“The Consent”) in 2020 about her traumatic relationship at the age of 14 with this man 36 years her senior.
A book that burst the scandal and prompted the Paris public prosecutor’s office to immediately launch an investigation into the rape of a 15-year-old minor.
See the exchange between Denise Bombardier and Gabriel Matzneff in the video above.