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The Strange Case Of Frédéric Mitterrand: France's Most Famous (Alleged) Pedophile
"Frédéric Mitterrand has occupied the highest reaches of cultural and political life in France. Nephew of former President François Mitterrand, Frédéric Mitterrand has not only served as Minister of Culture and Communication but also achieved success as an actor, writer, producer, director, film critic, television star and even college professor.Born to greatness and confidante to many of France's biggest luminaries, Frédéric is a genuine renaissance man.
However, he is also a pedophile, as he openly admitted in an autobiographical novel called "La Mauvaise Vie" ("The Bad Life"), which detailed his experiences in male brothels of Bangkok, Thailand.
“I got into the habit of paying for boys ... The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire I no longer needed to restrain or hide," he wrote.
“All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market, excite me enormously. One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint, but it pleases me beyond the reasonable.”
A best seller in 2005, the book was widely praised for its candor.
Despite all these revelations, Frederic somehow kept his job as culture minister until May 2012 when Nicolas Sarkozy (his friend and benefactor) lost his bid for re-election as president.
For unknown reasons, Sarkozy refused to sack Frederic and shrugged off all attacks on his appointee. Sarkozy even described Frederic's book as “courageous.”
One of the most disturbing aspects of European colonialism and imperialism in Africa, the Middle East and Asia involved the sexual abuse and exploitation of young boys by European men. There exist a multitude of accounts of such episodes -- especially of the British in India and the French in North Africa (where a legal age for consent simply did not exist or was not enforced).