A friend sent me this link yesterday. A librarian from Michigan sent me the link today and added “I will never look at literary awards the same.” I appreciated the link and the sentiment.

“PARIS — One of France’s most prestigious literary awards, the Renaudot can change a writer’s career overnight. Prizewinners jump onto best-seller lists. Publishers earn bragging rights in a nation that places literature at the heart of its sense of grandeur and global standing.

A striking example is now a notorious one: Gabriel Matzneff, the writer whose career was revived with the award in 2013 before collapsing this year when a woman published a bombshell account of their sexual relationship when she was underage. He now faces a police investigation in a national scandal that has exposed how clubby Parisian elites long protected, celebrated and enabled his pedophilia.

Mr. Matzneff’s win was engineered by an elite fully aware of his pedophilia, which he had brazenly defended for decades. His powerful editor and friends sat on the jury. “We thought he was broke, he was sick, this will cheer him up,” said Frédéric Beigbeder, a confidant of Mr. Matzneff and a Renaudot juror since 2011.

The fallout from the Matzneff affair has rippled through France, dividing feminists and seemingly ending the career of a powerful deputy mayor of Paris. Yet the insular world that dominates French literary life remains largely unscathed, demonstrating just how entrenched and intractable it really is.

Proof of that is the Renaudot — all but one of the same jurors who honored Mr. Matzneff are expected to crown this year’s winners on Monday.”

This will cheer him up. Unbelievable.

As this clip from the soon-to-be-released podcast, The Clown and the Candyman, describes, nothing stays hidden forever and these monsters all followed the same playbook dating back to the 1970’s.

https://play.acast.com/s/the-clown-and-the-candyman/introducing-theclownandthecandyman 

In response to a reader who asked for some clarity on the pedophile “flow chart” and accompanying notes, found at pages 80 and 81 of the record of the Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Crime concerning Sexual Exploitation of Children, Dated May 23, 25, June 10 and September 20, 1977, I offer the following.

First, the pages can be accessed at

Click to access 51083NCJRS.pdf

Second, if you have Marney Keenan’s book, The Snow Killings, read Chapter 5, The Sick Underbelly of the Beast. The flowchart is found at page 62 and is easier to read, although you still kind of need a magnifying glass for the smaller details. I can’t describe the details any better than she did, so you need to read that chapter carefully.

I recreated the drawing with the major details. There are additional details about the European network and the Church of the New Revelation, Inc. on the original drawing, but you will get the main idea. Michigan resident Francis (Frank) Duffield Shelden was a major, major player in the pedophile and child pornography rings that reached out internationally. His “legacy” still lives today in Michigan as this sick underbelly was left alone and it festered unabated, leaving victims littered along the way and a playbook that is addressed in The Clown and The Candyman.

Attached are relevant pages from the hearings and the summarized drawing of the flowchart.

My Dad’s spirit left his body late this afternoon. He crossed over and joined my Mother and my brother Tim.

He struggled with a motor neuron disease, diagnosed in August. He quickly lost the ability to speak and to swallow. He understood his diagnosis and prognosis and continued to communicate with written notes and “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” As of early fall, he was still walking outside with his walker.

My Dad wrote a note a week or so ago that said “I’ve had a good life, except for what happened to Tim.” His wife was an angel to him and he died at home, in his own bed on his own terms.

He was a warrior for justice for his son Tim. He conducted himself with dignity and just wanted the truth. He wanted someone in law enforcement to look him in the eyes and tell him the truth. He had such faith in law enforcement and in people doing the right thing until the awful, dawning realization that those in power deceived him and all of us and dishonored the child victims of the child killers in Oakland County. He was disrespected and lied to by prosecutors, judges, appellate judges, police chiefs, police and detectives. He did not back down but the obvious failures by these people and agencies were a deep wound on his soul. Yet he kept after it.

Thank you to those who tried to help advance his quest for justice for his son Tim. Thank you to those who supported him, even if just in spirit.

In his memory, if you could perform a random act of kindness in the next few days, this would help mitigate the treatment he received by Oakland County and the State of Michigan. The world could use a little kindness right now.

My Dad would have been 90 on March 11. He took the high road in the face of true evil. I am inspired by this and I hope you are, too.

“Father” Gary Berthiaume was charged with sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old boy in September 1977. The assault happened at Camp Ozanam, a St. Vincent DePaul Society camp overlooking Lake Huron in Port Sanilac.

I found this article while searching for Detroit area coverage of then prosecutor Brooks Patterson’s statements to the press about how Fr. Berthiaume had been cleared by polygraph in the OCCK crimes. Surely a Detroit area paper covered what had been reported in Lansing about Berthiaume’s “good grades” on his polygraph.

A September 20, 1977 article from the Detroit Free Press exclaims: 2d Sex Charge Filed Against Priest; HE’S CLEARED IN CHILD MURDERS.

The Free Press article notes that “Mark Stebbins, a 12-year-old Ferndale youth who was kidnapped and murdered in February 1976, attended that camp a few years before his death.” Yes. You read that right.

Here’s a little history on this glorious summer camp experience:

Click to access Part-2-Camp-Ozanam.pdf

Berthiaume may not have any connections to the OCCK crimes, but he may very well have knowledge of the kind of stuff detailed in the “pedophile flow chart,” involving a lot of players in Michigan. He may just be one of the many “garden variety” pedophile priests from the Catholic church. Or he may have some knowledge that will be helpful. While the N. Fox Island operation appeared to simply ordain their own “ministers,” why not ask this fuck if he knew Frank Shelden or any of the other organized pedophiles operating freely in Michigan. Was he ever at Fox Island? There are 10,000 questions he should be asked.

Police explain that the assault at Camp Ozanam was “an isolated incident.” The chances that this was an isolated incident are exactly zero. If you were victimized at Camp Ozanam, saw or knew of anything untoward, please call the Michigan Attorney General’s office at 517-335-7622 and ask to speak to someone in the Criminal Investigative Division. The office recently extradited this pedophile priest from Illinois to Michigan to answer for 1977 sex crimes against minor(s). They, unlike other law enforcement in Michigan, do not appear to be messing around.

Men like this think they can straighten everything up at the Pearly Gates and that forgiveness for this most heinous of crimes is freely given. I don’t know how that works, but I do know this man should have to stand at the prison gates first to answer for his crimes. Over $300,000 was paid to one of Berthiaume’s victims many years ago. I hope other victims of this bad priest file civil suits as well and do not agree to any kind of a nondisclosure agreement. This man and his enablers need to pay up.

Berthiaume will probably lie and feign memory loss when it comes to any knowledge about the OCCK crimes or related pedophile activities. After all, police and prosecutors have done the same thing in the OCCK investigation for decades. But he needs to be pressed on this anyway. And either way, if there are more victims out there–as we know by statistics, there must be–he needs to pay for those crimes with his freedom and his enablers’ checkbook. “I’m just a rapist, not a murderer,” might help Berthiaume in the OCCK case but he is a significant part of Michigan’s history of ignoring the cries of children and teens who were victimized in a part of the country where officials routinely looked the other way.