A French civil servant allegedly drugged over 240 women during job interviews over nine years, forcing them into situations where they had to urinate in public (Chrisafis, 2025). He kept a spreadsheet titled “Experiments” documenting times, reactions, and photographs of their legs.

The story is horrifying. But beyond the outrage, there’s something we need to talk about: this wasn’t just workplace harassment. This was sexual abuse with a very specific pattern—and understanding that pattern could help us prevent similar cases.

What actually happened

Christian Nègre, who worked at France’s culture ministry, would invite women for job interviews and offer them coffee or tea that he’d prepared himself. He’d then suggest continuing the interview outdoors—on lengthy walks through Paris, far from any toilets (Chrisafis, 2025).

The drinks were allegedly laced with a powerful illegal diuretic. Women described increasingly desperate physical symptoms: trembling hands, racing hearts, sweating, an overwhelming need to urinate. When they begged for bathroom breaks, he kept walking.

Sylvie Delezenne, one of the victims, described crouching beside a tunnel to urinate while he “shielded” her with his jacket. “I thought: ‘I’ve wrecked my interview,'” she said (Chrisafis, 2025). She stopped looking for work afterward, convinced she was useless.

Another woman, Anaïs de Vos, remembered him looking her in the eye and asking: “Do you need a wee?”—speaking to a grown professional woman like she was a child (Chrisafis, 2025).

Police discovered his computer spreadsheet in 2018. By then, he’d allegedly been doing this for nine years.

I’m sharing these details—and the analysis that follows—not to sensationalize, but because understanding the specific mechanics of how this abuse unfolded helps us recognize similar patterns before more people are harmed. The victims deserve to have what happened to them named accurately.

This wasn’t just about power

Yes, this is workplace abuse. Yes, it’s about power dynamics (Fitzgerald et al., 1997). But there’s another layer that matters: this was systematic predation driven by sexual gratification.

The documented pattern—preparing drinks himself, engineering outdoor scenarios far from toilets, keeping detailed records of women’s reactions—is consistent with patterns seen in urolagnia (sexual arousal from urination) combined with coercive humiliation. According to the DSM-5, paraphilias themselves are not inherently problematic; they become paraphilic disorders only when they cause distress or involve non-consenting individuals (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Urolagnia itself isn’t a standalone diagnosis—it would be classified under “Other Specified Paraphilic Disorder” only when it involves harm or non-consent.

To be clear: understanding someone’s arousal patterns is not the same as making claims about their identity or orientation. This is about recognizing specific behavioral patterns that signal danger, not pathologizing sexuality itself.

This wasn’t opportunistic. This was calculated violation.

Why the sexual component matters

When we only frame workplace abuse as “power gone wrong,” we miss specific warning signs. Someone who systematically engineers situations where women are forced to urinate in public isn’t just enjoying authority—they’re getting sexual gratification from a very particular scenario.

Red flags that could have emerged:

• Consistently insisting on outdoor meetings far from facilities
• Always offering drinks and controlling their preparation
• Unusual interest in bathroom access or bodily functions
• Previous complaints about taking photos of women’s legs

None of these things alone would raise alarms. Together, they form a pattern. These are grooming indicators, not proof in isolation. The point isn’t to become hypervigilant about every unusual interview—it’s to recognize when multiple signals converge into a pattern.

Institutions miss these patterns for predictable reasons: behaviors get fragmented across different complaints, “eccentric” men in authority get normalized, and there’s institutional fear of overreacting to ambiguous signals. This is how someone can operate for nine years with a spreadsheet titled “Experiments” before anyone connects the dots.

Consent is everything

I need to be clear about something: there are people who consensually engage in practices involving urination within negotiated kink contexts. That happens between informed adults who’ve discussed boundaries, established safewords, and agreed on aftercare.

What happened in France was abuse. The victims were:

• Drugged without their knowledge
• Given no information or choice
• Placed in vulnerable professional situations (job interviews)
• Deliberately humiliated
• Left with lasting trauma

A fetish isn’t abuse. Acting on a fetish without consent—especially by drugging people—absolutely is. The distinction is fundamental in sexual ethics and clinical practice (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

The shame that keeps victims silent

Here’s what struck me about the victims’ accounts: many blamed themselves. They thought they’d failed the interview. That they were unprofessional. That something was wrong with them.

Delezenne stopped looking for work for four years. De Vos described feeling “really ill” but still thought she’d done something wrong. Another victim left France entirely (Chrisafis, 2025).

This self-blame is well-documented in sexual assault survivors and actually predicts increased vulnerability to future victimization (Miller et al., 2007). When your body is weaponized against you—when you’re forced into a degrading physical experience—the shame runs deep. As trauma expert Judith Herman notes, violations that combine humiliation with helplessness create particularly complex trauma responses (Herman, 2015). Predators count on that shame to keep people silent.

Chemical submission: a term we need to know

France calls this “chemical submission”—drug-facilitated abuse. Research shows that drug-facilitated sexual assault is significantly underreported, partly because victims often don’t realize they’ve been drugged until much later, if at all (Hagemann et al., 2013).

Most of us think of date rape drugs, but it’s broader than that. The Pelicot case that dominated headlines involved a man drugging his wife unconscious so other men could rape her. This case involves drugging for humiliation and fetishistic gratification.

Both are sexual violence. Both exploit victims’ inability to consent or resist. We need to expand our understanding of how people use drugs to violate others—coerced intoxication, drugging for specific scenarios, using substances to create particular vulnerabilities (Hagemann et al., 2013).

Professional spaces as hunting grounds

Job interviews are uniquely vulnerable situations. You’re being evaluated. You want to appear professional, agreeable, competent. You’re likely to accept offered drinks. You’re likely to go along with unusual requests like walking outside.

Research on workplace sexual harassment demonstrates how power differentials create environments where predatory behavior can flourish, particularly when organizational structures fail to provide adequate oversight (Fitzgerald et al., 1997). Predators understand this. They exploit the social contract of professional behavior—our politeness, our deference to authority, our reluctance to seem “difficult.”

One of Nègre’s victims said: “In an interview situation, I’d never say no” to an offered coffee (Chrisafis, 2025). That’s exactly what he was counting on.

This means workplace safeguarding can’t just be “report if something happens.” We need:

• Policies against solo, unmonitored interviews
• Clear guidelines on interview locations and durations
• Multiple contact points for candidates
• Systems that take “odd” behavior seriously, even if not overtly sexual
• Training that helps people recognize grooming patterns

Justice delayed is justice denied

Six years later, many victims are still waiting for trial. Nègre was removed from civil service in 2019 but continues working in the private sector (Chrisafis, 2025). He’s not in prison. He’s moved on. His victims are still frozen in nightmares and PTSD.

As one victim said: “Six years later, we’re still waiting for a trial. It’s mind-blowing. The justice process is bringing more trauma than healing” (Chrisafis, 2025).

Her lawyer called this “secondary victimization,” and that’s exactly right. When institutional systems designed to help survivors instead compound their suffering through delays and lack of accountability, they create new trauma (Herman, 2015). When justice moves this slowly, it tells survivors and predators alike that these violations don’t matter enough.

What we actually need

We need to understand that sexual abuse takes many forms—not just rape, not just physical assault. We need to recognize that paraphilias and kinks are clinically neutral; consent is what determines whether they’re expressed ethically or abusively (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

We need to teach people to trust their instincts when professional situations feel off. We need systems that protect vulnerable people in institutional contexts. We need to take seriously reports of unusual behavior even when it’s not overtly criminal.

This case is horrifying precisely because once you understand sexual psychology, you can see exactly what was happening: systematic violation for sexual gratification, engineered to exploit professional vulnerability and bodily shame.

The question isn’t just “how do we catch predators?” It’s “how do we build cultures where systematic abuse becomes impossible?”

It starts with calling things what they are. This wasn’t just bad HR. This was sexual violence dressed up as career opportunity. And we need to be able to name it to stop it.

Need support understanding consent, boundaries, or recovering from sexual violation?

Eros Coaching provides confidential support for individuals navigating sexual trauma, consent questions, and the journey back to embodied trust. We also offer education and training for organizations committed to recognizing and preventing sexual harm in professional settings. Contact us here.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Publishing.

Chrisafis, A. (2025, November 26). ‘I didn’t even know this type of attack existed’: More than 200 women allege drugging by senior French civil servant. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/26/women-allege-drugging-by-senior-french-civil-servant

Fitzgerald, L. F., Drasgow, F., Hulin, C. L., Gelfand, M. J., & Magley, V. J. (1997). Antecedents and consequences of sexual harassment in organizations: A test of an integrated model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 578-589.

Hagemann, C. T., Helland, A., Spigset, O., Espnes, K. A., Ormstad, K., & Schei, B. (2013). Ethanol and drug findings in women consulting a Sexual Assault Center—Associations with clinical characteristics and suspicions of drug-facilitated sexual assault. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 20(6), 777-784.

Herman, J. L. (2015). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—From domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

Miller, A. K., Markman, K. D., & Handley, I. M. (2007). Self-blame among sexual assault victims prospectively predicts revictimization: A perceived sociolegal context model of risk. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 29(2), 129-136.

About Dr. Martha Tara Lee