Mitterrand accused of 'lies' on boys

CULTURE minister Frédéric Mitterrand has come under renewed attack after his televised denial that he paid boys for sex – with National Front vice-president Marine Le Pen accusing him of “lying”.

Mr Mitterrand claimed when he wrote in his autobiography that he paid “boys” gosses for sex in Thailand he was talking about adults of his own age.

Ms Le Pen called on him to resign for lying, saying: “Mr Mitterrand has lied with impunity. But for French people to believe that the ‘kids’ he talks about in his book are 40-year-old men then that piles indignity upon indignity.”

Mr Mitterrand said in an interview with TF1 that he condemned “sexual tourism, which is a disgrace. I condemn paedophilia, which I have never in any way participated in”.

However, in his 2005 autobiography The Bad Life he wrote: “I got into the habit of paying for boys... all these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excites me enormously.”

Critics on both right and left have criticised him but he has been backed by Nicolas Sarkozy, with the president’s spokesman denouncing critics as “pathetic”.

In the TV interview Mr Mitterrand said he had committed “a mistake certainly, a crime? No, nor a fault because each time I was with people of my age. They were consenting.”

The Ouest France said “ministers or elected officials should be above any suspicion. One cannot exhort citizens to agree to sacrifices, to respect the law, to accept civic and moral responsibility if they sow the seeds of doubt themselves.”

Le Dauphiné Libéré suggests that “in life there are pages it is better to know to turn. Quickly. Just as in certain books.”
Photo: TF1