An investigation was opened by the Dijon prosecutor’s office for “violence” after a case of a sting in a Dijon nightclub on the night of May 7 to 8, 2022. A woman in her twenties claims to have been stung while she was spending an evening with friends at La Rhumerie La Jamaïque. Another Dijonnaise filed a complaint the same week for similar facts the same evening, but in Orléans. His complaint was forwarded to the Orleans prosecutor’s office. Faced with the scale of the phenomenon, which is beginning to spread to the Côte-d’Or, the Dijon prosecutor’s office calls for vigilance, as do professionals in the night world and caregivers.
Caregiver concerns
On Monday, May 9, while he was on duty in the emergency room of the Dijon University Hospital, Doctor Martin Ambroise received two women claiming to be victims of injections in nightclubs the same day, one in Dijon, the another in Orleans. This is the first time he has heard of this mysterious phenomenon. The victim stung in Dijon then describes his evening and his symptoms: “She feels a sting and goes to the locker room to see what happened and there she sees a puncture point with a little bleeding“, explains the doctor. On Sunday, she feels “weird leg pain“. The doctor tries to reassure her and makes her pass a series of tests, taking her blood. The first analyzes revealed no trace of drugs, but that does not necessarily mean that there were none. The Dijon prosecutor’s office recalls that traces of narcotics such as GHB disappear very quickly, after six hours.
“It’s heartbreaking that young women can’t party safely”
There is always that “the first risk is to be raped“but also of”being inoculated with bacteria, either HIV or hepatitis“, warns Martin Ambroise. This situation deeply shocks this caregiver, father of a family. Women “should not be permanent targets”, he denounces. He believes that they “are bored enough in nightclubs by men who have had trouble assuming their libido otherwise, so finding themselves like that at the mercy of criminals is really worrying“.
In order to better protect these potential victims and better alert law enforcement, the doctor would like a protocol “clear and standardized” be set up within the hospital in order to “better know what to look for and what to dose, both in terms of drugs and in terms of infection, because the objective is to prevent women from being raped and at the health level to avoid to spread viruses“.
Distraught professionals
For several days, rumors have been growing about other bites in other Dijon bars, which worries many young people. Cleo, 19, does not want “no more going to nightclubs“because she doesn’t want to”take the risk“. Jules decided to dress him differently: “I don’t wear thick shirts and pants anymore, and I’m careful when looking behind me“, specifies the 16-year-old teenager. He also appeals to the managers of the nightclubs and wonders if it would not be possible to “check the bags at the entrance”, even if he admits that he does not go. not in a nightclub “to have a full search”.
Professionals in the sector are trying to find solutions to this phenomenon, but it is very difficult to monitor everyone. “There are already security guards in the room, but there is not one security guard per customer“, launches Gilbert Febvay, representative of the night world for Umih in Côte-d’Or and manager of the Dijon discotheque Beverly. He did put up awareness posters against GHB and installed a metal detector, but he does not believe that a small needle can be detected by these detectors. While waiting to find other solutions, Gilbert Febvay sent an instruction to his employees: “to call the fire brigade or the Samu or to have the victim taken to the hospital by his close friends“.
Requested, the Jamaica establishment did not respond to our requests.
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