Senior Ministry of Culture official accused of drugging women during job interviews
A senior civil servant at France's Ministry of Culture, Christian Nègre, is under investigation for allegedly drugging dozens of female interviewees between 2009 and 2018.
During job interviews at the Ministry of Culture, several women report that senior official Christian Nègre offered coffee that made them experience an uncontrollable urge to urinate, forcing them into public or makeshift toilets. Anaïs de Vos recounts a 2011 interview where she felt weak, dizzy and eventually wet herself after Nègre led her to a storage cupboard under a bridge. Marie-Hélène Brice describes a similar episode in 2016 in Strasbourg, ending with public urination and lasting urinary problems.
Police investigations revealed a document called "Experiments P" on Nègre's computer, cataloguing the alleged victims and the timing of the diuretic administration. Nègre was first suspended in 2018 following a separate incident involving a photograph, dismissed in 2019, and is now formally investigated on multiple charges, awaiting trial. Victims say the prolonged legal process has caused secondary victimisation, and they criticize the slow progress of the case.
Why it matters
The allegations highlight potential abuse of power in French civil service recruitment and raise concerns about how such crimes are investigated.
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