the government mission on the dangers of chemical submission collects the first testimonies of victims

This mission aims to quantify this scourge. It is led by MP Sandrine Josso, herself a victim.

“Hello everyone, you are victims of chemical submission. I want to tell you that I know very well that what you experienced cannot be forgotten.” Thus begins, Tuesday May 21 at the National Assembly, the first hearing devoted to the collection of testimonies from victims of chemical submission and led by Sandrine Josso. Chemical submission consists of the administration for criminal purposes of psychoactive substances without the victim’s knowledge or under threat, to commit a crime or misdemeanor. The MoDem MP for Loire-Atlantique herself filed a complaint in 2023 against a fellow senator suspected of having drugged her with ecstasy to sexually assault her.

Facing Sandrine Josso, in the room or by videoconference, around fifteen victims came to testify, women, men, aged 19 to 62. Everyone experienced the black outamnesia, doubt, shame, difficulty, also, in being heard by their loved ones, the police or even the justice system.

Drugged without her knowledge by the former director of the Montaigne Institute, Sophie Conrad is one of the rare ones not to testify under a pseudonym: “I was drugged by my manager at his home and drugged with MDMA, with a little over three times the recreational dose. The moment the first symptoms appeared, my first instinct was to run away. If I hadn’t filed a complaint, I would never have known what was in my body“, she says. Her attacker was definitively convicted.

But for Laurence, drugged and abused at the age of 47 by a friend, filing a complaint was a real fight against the police, mainly. “I didn’t understand until the next morning what was happening to me. I vomited all night, all morning and around 11:30 a.m. I realized that I must have been druggedshe remembers. I call it rape, because consent under chemical submission is not consent. So, I went to the 15th arrondissement police station where I was greeted like a delinquent. ‘If you file a rape complaint, you’re out the door. We decide which complaints you investigate or not.’ That’s what I was told.”

By videoconference, sunglasses on, an alleged victim of Damien Abad speaks. She recounts how the MP and former minister allegedly abused her by drugging her without her knowledge: “This person offered me champagne and I found myself the next day in a hotel room with no clothes on. And I cried for hours and hours. I showered afterwards for hours too. I was shocked , I didn’t do any analysis.”

“What I wanted at the time was to pretend like nothing had happened.”

An alleged victim of Damien Abad

during the government mission on the dangers of chemical submission

Since her attack, Sandrine Josso says she has received hundreds of emails, letters and calls from victims of chemical submission. The MP has six months to “examine all the questions and issues surrounding chemical submission, the care of victims and the prevention of this form of violence and to make all proposals in these matters“, according to the government mission letter. To collect these testimonies, the mission opened a white paper, which will be accompanied by concrete proposals and submitted to the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, next October.