How to Protect Children: Against the System That Let Matzneff Thrive

Monday, April 14, 2025

There is no such thing as a lone predator. Every predator is held in place by a structure — of admiration, of silence, of complicity, of adult disconnection. Matzneff did not exist in a vacuum. He was a product of French literary culture, but more than that, he was the consequence of thousands of adults who failed — actively, passively, cowardly — to see what was right in front of them.

Vanessa was not abused in secret. She was abused in the open, under the eyes of publishers, editors, television hosts, writers, and even her own family. Some dismissed it as a “literary passion.” Others warned her, but softly, abstractly, as if afraid of being too clear. And some — the most tragic — simply lost touch with her frequency. They cut the line. They stopped listening.

Protection is not surveillance. It is resonance.

A child does not need more rules, more cameras, more statistics. A child needs to be recognized. Seen not as a naïve creature to be led, but as a complex, sensing, intelligent entity who already knows when something feels wrong. The tragedy is that most children do know. They signal it — with hesitation, with silence, with flickers of withdrawal or strange intensity. But adults, trained to suppress their own sensitivity, cannot or will not receive these signals.

The failure is not just institutional. It is perceptual.

Pedocriminality thrives not because children are too weak to resist, but because adults are too fragmented to see.

What protects a child is not fear. It is alignment. It is the presence of at least one adult who remains attuned — not performatively, not intrusively, but genuinely. An adult who refuses to sever the thread, even when the child grows complex, rebellious, or emotionally unpredictable. It is this frequency — this co-presence — that keeps a child from seeking resonance elsewhere, in the wrong places, with the wrong adults.

When parents stop listening — not to the words, but to the frequency — children drift. And predators know how to catch what drifts.

Matzneff never seduced children. He inhabited the gap left by those who should have been there.

And let us be clear: Matzneff was not exceptional. He was banal. He followed a script — the same one followed by many adults who eroticize youth, aestheticize abuse, intellectualize domination. The only thing that makes him visible now is that someone, finally, survived long enough to name him. But for every Vanessa, there are thousands who never get to write.

So how do we protect children?

Stop infantilizing them. Children and adolescents are not pure. They are not simple. They are not innocent. They are alive. Their desire is real — not in a sexualized sense, but in a full-bodied, exploratory, self-defining sense. When adults deny this, they leave young people unarmed.
Refuse the script of exceptional predators. There are no monsters. Only structures that produce and protect them. The focus must shift from the “abuser’s psychology” to the system that allowed them to move freely, publish books, receive prizes, and sit on talk shows.
Cultivate somatic resonance. Real protection is not taught in school. It’s a daily practice of presence, of feeling the shifts in someone’s body language, of picking up the pauses, the subtle distress. It’s about staying available without colonizing.
Believe the fractures. When a child’s story doesn’t make sense, when they act out, when they say something “too mature,” that is precisely when adults must pay attention. Trauma does not speak in perfect sentences.
Let children contradict you. A child who can say no, who can challenge adult authority without being punished, is a child who can protect themselves. The obedient child is the most vulnerable.

What failed Vanessa was not just one man. It was a culture. A silence. A performance of care that lacked the courage of presence.

To protect the next generation, we must become radically present. Not anxious. Not moralistic. Present. Attuned enough to feel when something is wrong before it becomes unspeakable.

And we must carry this truth:
When a child feels truly seen, predators become irrelevant.