# French minister in 'boy sex' row

**URL:** <https://forums.speedlife.net/t/french-minister-in-boy-sex-row/74580>\
**Category:** NYSpeed Off Topic\
**Created:** [October 8, 2009, 12:00pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/french-minister-in-boy-sex-row/74580 "2009-10-08T12:00:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![theblue](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/theblue/32/5074_2.png) [@theblue](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/theblue)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 12:00pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/french-minister-in-boy-sex-row/74580/1 "2009-10-08T12:00:09Z")

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wow

> **France’s Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand is facing intense pressure over a book he wrote that described paying for “young boys” in Thailand.**

> The book was written four years ago, before he joined the government, but is back in the headlines following his impassioned support for Roman Polanski.  
> Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on child sex charges.  
> Mr Mitterrand, nephew of late President Francois Mitterrand, is expected to defend himself on TV later on Thursday.  
> Mr Mitterrand has come under attack from right and left.  
> In his 2005 book The Bad Life, he wrote: “I got into the habit of paying for boys,” saying his attraction to young male prostitutes was not dimmed despite knowing “the sordid details of this traffic”.  
> “All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously… the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire.”  
> Mr Mitterrand, 62, has denied being a paedophile, saying the term “boys” was used loosely.  
> The account of cruising for prostitutes in Thailand attracted little attention when it was published in 2005, when Mr Mitterrand was a TV personality.  
> **‘Sex tourism’**  
> He did not share his uncle’s socialist politics, and was brought into the centre-right government by President Nicolas Sarkozy in June 2009.  
> But his strong defence of Polanski has brought the book back into the public eye. Polanski faces deportation to the United States for having had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.  
> Mr Mitterrand said the US’ behaviour, in seeking his extradition, was callous and “horrifying”.  
> Socialist Party spokesman Benoit Hamon told Reuters: “As a minister of culture he has drawn attention to himself by defending a film maker accused of raping a child and he has written a book where he said he took advantage of sexual tourism. To say the least, I find it shocking.”  
> Marine Le Pen, vice president of the right-wing National Front, read excerpts of Mr Mitterrand’s book aloud during a television interview, and said it left “an indelible stain on the government”.  
> She called for the culture minister to step down.  
> “Resign, Mr Mitterrand and perhaps, afterwards we’ll be able to give lessons to other people,” she said.  
> **Mr Mitterrand said it was an honour to be dragged though the mud by the National Front, and criticised the Socialists for making common cause with the extreme right.**   
> A senior aide to President Sarkozy, Henri Guaino, on Thursday backed the minister, saying the row was “excessive and quite undignified”.  
> But the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby, in Paris, says that the revelation that a senior cabinet minister was involved in sex tourism, just as the country holds negotiations with Thailand to discuss ways of fighting it, will inevitably embarrass Mr Sarkozy’s government.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8296578.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8296578.)\*\*\*

EDIT: my link won’t work because of \*\*\* no longer being a vendor here, LOL.