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For more than a decade, a former senior French civil servant stood accused of orchestrating a pattern of alleged drug-facilitated abuse against job candidates, leaving hundreds of women grappling with lasting psychological and physical harm—and a justice system that has left them waiting years for accountability.

Anaïs de Vos was 27 years old when she sat down for a 2011 job interview at France’s Ministry of Culture in Paris, opposite interviewer Christian Nègre, then a top civil servant in the department. Unaccustomed to drinking coffee, de Vos accepted Nègre’s offer of a cup out of professional courtesy, only to find the drink had an unpleasant off taste that led her to consume just half. Within minutes of starting the meeting, Nègre suggested the pair move their conversation outside for a stroll through Paris’s central streets.

It was not long before de Vos began experiencing sudden, uncontrollable physical symptoms: an overwhelming, urgent need to urinate, followed rapidly by growing weakness that left her unable to feel her legs. When she told Nègre she needed to find a toilet immediately, she recalled his response as eerily giddy, framing her urgent need like that of a misbehaving child. He directed her to a locked storage cupboard under a Seine River bridge and told her she could relieve herself there. Alarmed by the disturbing suggestion, de Vos insisted they continue to a public facility.

The pair headed to the Louvre, where public restrooms required a one-euro fee that neither de Vos—who had left her purse at the ministry—nor Nègre claimed to have cash to cover. By the time de Vos found a cafe that would let her use their bathroom, she had already lost control of her bladder. Shaken, she managed to hide the accident thanks to the dress she wore that day, and completed the three-hour interview dizzy and completely drained. She left without the job, and carried vague suspicions that something was very wrong that day, but buried the thought that a public official at a government ministry could have harmed her on purpose. The incident gutted her self-confidence, she says, pushing her onto a far less ambitious career trajectory in the years that followed.

It was not until 2019, when police reached out to de Vos, that her vague unease became a shocking confirmation: she was one of nearly 200 women Nègre was suspected of drugging during fake job interviews at the ministry. Dozens more victims have come forward since that initial notification, bringing the total number of accusers to nearly 250. All allege Nègre subjected them to chemical submission—a form of abuse where drugs are used to strip victims of control over their bodies—between 2009 and 2018. Investigators believe Nègre used diuretics, common medications used to treat conditions like high blood pressure that trigger excess urine production, to humiliate and control his alleged victims. On Nègre’s computer, police found a detailed spreadsheet titled “Experiments P” that logged every step of his alleged actions: the time each candidate arrived for their interview, when the diuretic was given, how long it took for the urge to urinate to take effect, and even what type of underwear the woman was wearing.

Marie-Hélène Brice, another alleged victim whose name appeared in Nègre’s notes, says her 2016 interview with Nègre in Strasbourg followed an almost identical pattern. Nègre suggested a walk along a local canal to calm her interview nerves, and within minutes Brice began experiencing the same crippling, urgent need to use a toilet. Nègre told her he knew where a public restroom was located, but when they arrived, no facility existed. Left with no other option, Brice was forced to urinate in public, while Nègre stood over her, never taking his eyes off her even as he offered to shield her with his jacket. Like de Vos, Brice carried the shame of the incident for years, only learning she was one of dozens of victims when police contacted her. The abuse left her with lasting urinary issues alongside severe psychological distress, and she says the incident fits her definition of sexual assault without question. “I have been attacked, I have been intoxicated, I have been poisoned, but for me it is a sexual assault, clearly,” Brice told reporters.

The investigation into Nègre first opened in June 2018, when a colleague caught him taking upskirt photos of a woman under a table. He was suspended from his post as regional director of cultural affairs almost immediately, and fired from the Ministry of Culture in 2019. Prosecutors say Nègre admitted to investigators in 2018 that he “imposed humiliating situations on women” during these job interviews. Now in his 60s, Nègre is under formal investigation on charges including drugging, invasion of privacy, and sexual assault, and is awaiting trial. The BBC reached out to Nègre for comment through his legal team, but he declined to respond to the allegations.

The Nègre case has drawn new national attention to the issue of chemical submission in France, a topic that gained widespread public notoriety in 2024 after the conviction of Dominique Pelicot, who drugged his wife Gisele Pelicot for years and invited strangers to rape her while she was unconscious. French MP Sandrine Josso, who became a leading advocate for chemical submission survivors after a French senator was convicted of drugging and assaulting her earlier this year, has pushed for systemic changes to how France handles these cases. Josso championed a new pilot program that allows women who suspect they have been drugged to submit blood, urine, or hair samples for toxicology testing without first filing a formal police complaint, a change designed to remove barriers for survivors seeking confirmation of their abuse.

Yet major gaps remain: most of Nègre’s alleged victims had no idea they had been drugged for years after their encounters, and toxic substances only remain detectable in blood and urine for a short window after administration. While drugs can be detected in hair samples for longer periods, tracing the exact timing of administration becomes far more difficult as time passes. Jean-Claude Alvarez, a toxicology professor who leads the pilot testing program at Paris’s Raymond-Poincaré AP-HP Hospital, called the use of diuretics for this purpose “very unusual,” adding he had never encountered such a case in 26 years of practice. The program has now added diuretics to its standard screening panel in response to the Nègre case.

Fifteen years after de Vos’s interview, and seven years after she first spoke to police, the case has yet to go to trial—a delay that has left dozens of survivors frustrated and re-traumatized. According to the women’s rights group Fondation des Femmes, which supports 30 of Nègre’s alleged victims, Nègre has continued to work in human resources throughout the investigation. De Vos, now 42, says she heard nothing about the case from authorities between 2019 and 2023, despite repeated emails seeking updates. “For four years, I was alone with the knowledge that I was a victim. I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I am very angry with the justice system.” Brice describes the long wait for trial as “secondary victimisation,” noting that survivors are forced to repeatedly prove the harm they suffered while waiting years for any sense of resolution. Many say they do not feel authorities take their claims seriously.

Kalliopi Mingeirou, a representative from UN Women, told the BBC that drug-facilitated sexual assault remains a greatly underaddressed issue globally, and that systemic delays in abuse cases destroy survivors’ lives. The BBC requested comment from French police, judicial authorities, and the national government on the criticisms raised by survivors, but no response was provided.

For Brice and de Vos, speaking out publicly has become a way to turn pain into action. After years of staying silent out of shame, Brice says she no longer hides her status as a survivor. “It is important for me to speak publicly because it allowed some victims to recognise themselves, to discover they were a victim and to file a complaint in turn,” she said. “Speaking out is necessary in the world in which we live, it is important to talk about sexist and sexual violence.”