Some prosecutors compare this phenomenon to that of “mean” clowns that appeared in 2014. Victims file a complaint after being bitten during a night of a party, against their will.
But no trace of drugs in their blood.
Since the reopening of nightclubs on February 16, young men and women have discovered mysterious traces of stings on their bodies the day after an evening in a nightclub, in concert or at a festival.
Complaints are piling up and investigations are opening up everywhere.
These "wild" stings, we do not know precisely who are the authors, nor by what means.
“I suddenly had a black veil in front of my eyes, told Zoé, a 20-year-old student, in our columns.
I completely lost my vision.
Came out of the box and had my legs completely cut off.
I fell to the ground.
Her doctor spotted “immediately” a small red spot on her buttocks, characteristic according to her of a needle stick.
Read alsoThe Île-de-France affected by wild bites in the evenings: “It scares me very much these stories”
Cases like these, the Ministry of the Interior identified more than 2,100 at the end of September, against just over 800 at the end of June, a Radio France survey revealed on Friday.
The Music Festival brought 80 more, the Bayonne festivals about twenty.
During summer,
“The phenomenon continued quietly”, explains to our colleagues Leila Chaouachi, pharmacist at the addictovigilance center in Paris who analyzes these cases at the national level.
“66% of them concern young women, with an average age of 20 years.
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Special centers in Bordeaux, Nancy, Dijon
It all started in the Nantes region, in the second half of February.
In the space of a few days, twenty women and three men who had frequented eight night establishments lodged a complaint, after noticing a bruise on their arm or leg, with a red dot in the center.
The beginning of a long series: dozens of other cases, and other complaints, have since appeared in Grenoble (Isère), Béziers (Hérault), Tours (Indre-et-Loire), Saint-Malo, Rennes ( Ille-et-Vilaine), Périgueux (Dordogne), then in the Paris region.
A third of victims show no symptoms.
Two-thirds have symptoms such as hot flushes, vomiting or malaise, and 15% report amnesia, the survey said.
But most analyzes of sting victims have revealed nothing.
"The rape drug", GHB, classified as a narcotic, like its derivative GBL, were not detected in the blood or urine of the victims.
In any case not at rates which show that the victim was drugged since the body naturally secretes GHB.
However, the effect of some drugs disappears very quickly in the blood.
So since May 2022, centers have implemented protocols so that the analyzes are carried out more quickly, in Bordeaux, Nancy and Dijon.
But this device has a cost… for the victims.
“You should know that it is the prosecutor who decides whether or not to carry out the analyses, because it costs more than 1,000 euros.
If the prosecutor does not wish to prosecute, it is the victim who must pay, ”explains Magali Labadie to Radio France.
Moreover, the complaints are so numerous that the laboratories have trouble keeping up.
Many complaints, few resolved cases
In this case, the police only arrested a few dozen people across the country.
In most cases, the suspects were released due to lack of evidence.
Only four of them are still in pre-trial detention, including two men in their thirties after the complaint of a young girl in a nightclub in Six-Fours-les-Plages, in the Var.
“They were identified by CCTV.
The investigators found syringes and injectable products in one of them, ”explains the Toulon prosecutor to our colleagues.
The suspect, who did not admit the facts, affirms that these products belong to his wife who is a nurse.
France is not the only country concerned: Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom… Dozens of complaints have been filed by young women elsewhere in Europe.