on France 2 a powerful documentary on this scourge that has been ignored for too long

Naming is not in vain. When asked, words can reveal the depth of a hitherto unthought reality. Producer and director Andrea Rawlins Gaston experienced this widespread experience in 2021 when faced with the term chemical submission, popularized by Caroline Darian (1), daughter of Gisèle Pelicot.

“Despite twenty years of work on gender-based and sexual violence, I have been completely deaf and blind to chemical submission. Yet it was before my eyes, in many cases that I handled, in testimonies that I collected. I also realized that it is a system, a modus operandi as well as the best kept secret of rapists.”

Dominique Pelicot had naked photos of her daughter

From this trigger was born the documentary Chemical submission: so that shame changes sidesbroadcast this Tuesday, January 21 on France 2, at 9:10 p.m. Caroline Darian is the common thread. Because she is not only the child of Gisèle Pelicot: she is also, with her sisters-in-law, one of the victims of Dominique Pelicot, her father.

He had two photos of her, naked, then aged around thirty. One taken at her home and the other in a place she doesn’t recognize. No more than the lingerie she wears. The forty-year-old keeps proclaiming: “I can’t sleep in these images. » But, to defend herself, she only has her certainty of having been sedated and abused.

“I represent at least 95%, if not 99% of victims of chemical submission for the purposes of sexual assault or rape, who do not have tangible evidence to make themselves heard before the police and in a court”, she launched at the end of the year in a short video of the #Don’tignorer campaign, launched by the Women’s Foundation.

On December 19, 2024, in addition to the rapes, Dominique Pelicot was found guilty of possessing and disseminating images violating the dignity of people. If “the unbearable questioning and the intimate conviction (of Caroline Darian) of being a victim in her own right” was heard by the attorney general, the latter had, during the indictment, specified: “The rule of law requires objective and material elements. Despite investigations, these could not be sufficiently characterized. We do not minimize his suffering, but not all suffering can be translated into legal terms,” reported Le Monde.

The products administered cause amnesia

Today, chemical submission remains a largely underestimated phenomenon, according to Caroline Darian. Founder of the #Mendorspas(2) association, she has received many testimonies along these lines. As for the precise count of victims, it is lacking in France. “Today, we have no identification system other than filing complaints. But with three years of hindsight, I can say that we are well beyond the hundred cases clearly recorded each year” specified the activist, on December 11, 2024, during the screening reserved for the press of the documentary.

Due to the amnesia caused by the administered products, many victims are unaware. Some with clues doubt what they may have suffered. Others struggle or give up filing a complaint. Despite everything, after the shock wave caused nationally and internationally by the so-called Mazan rape trial, awareness seems to be dawning. On an individual and collective scale.

The story of several victims of all ages

Thanks to the documentary Chemical submission: so that shame changes sidesCaroline Darian and directors Andrea Rawlins Gaston and Linda Bendali weave a choral story that shakes up as much as it enlightens. Zoé, 33 years old, Céline 46 years old, Léa, 22 years old, Rénald, 48 years old, Katia, 53 years old, Lilwenn, 16 years old and her mother, Sandrine, speak at length. Their journeys outline the plurality of techniques of the attackers, the effects of the molecules used, the paths taken to recognize the aggression in order to confront this trauma. To “put meaning in this story which makes no sense” as Zoé puts it, raped at 15 and become a general practitioner.

Their words challenge preconceived ideas. Among them, GHB, the so-called rapist drug, is only used in 5% of cases. The attackers – who are rarely strangers – dig massively into the domestic medicine cabinet and divert medications – anxiolytics, sleeping pills, anti-epileptics, anti-allergics, etc.

In addition, one in two sedated people remember nothing. Absolutely nothing, like Gisèle Pelicot. In the other half, due to the substances used, some may remain awake without being able to move. “I am locked in my body,” Rénald relates in the film. He has not forgotten the brutality that a man he rejected imposed on him at 17, nor his identity and his words: “I own you. You are my thing. See, I told you I’d have you”

Which echo those, in the film’s introduction, of Caroline Darian – “chemical submission is the ultimate stage of male domination” – or of Céline, attacked by a hierarchical superior – “(drugging someone) is reduce it to nothing, reduce it to an object.”

Lack of training for doctors, police, etc.

Through their journeys, these witnesses also point out French shortcomings: lack of training for doctors and police services; lack of information for victims regarding the procedures to be carried out; lack of interest from political decision-makers; difficulty of the social body in questioning sexual violence.

Without a doubt, these powerful testimonies will allow women and men to recognize themselves, to break their loneliness, to act against their tormentor, and perhaps, to find the spring that they still lacked to change their own sense of shame in the other camp. However, the usefulness of this film goes beyond the people intimately affected by this tragedy: it is aimed at society

Via Telegram, attackers exchange information

On a collective scale, this awakening to the reality of chemical submission pushed the press to investigate and the courts to take over cases. At the end of December 2024, after a year of infiltration, German journalists Isabell Beer and Isabel Ströh shared the fruit of their work. Using a fake profile, they obtained links allowing them, on Telegram messaging, to access discussion threads. One of them had at that time more than 73,000 users of all nationalities. Through this means, strangers exchanged information on sedation methods for rape and sexual assault. Sometimes with the sharing of photos and videos – some live – attesting to their actions.

This revelation supports the analysis of Zoé, one of the witnesses in the France 2 documentary: “sexual violence is a product of our society”. As staggering as it is, this German investigation may have shed light on only a tiny fraction of the scale of chemical submission since it only focused on a single courier service.

The Pelicot affair acted as a revealer

Other digital channels propagating the same content probably exist. This was the case of the coco.gg site until its closure in June 2024. The portal was “known for many years as a facilitator of the commission of various offenses, in particular acts of child crime, pimping, prostitution, rapes, sale of narcotics, ambushes, even homicides” according to the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, at the origin of this closure.

It was on the latter that Dominique Pelicot opened a discussion space called “A son unsuspect” through which he recruited his wife’s rapists. Secondly, on January 7, 2025, the founder of this platform, the Italian Isaac Steidl, was placed in police custody and then indicted as part of a judicial investigation opened by the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Crime. crime.

In France, like abroad, the Pelicot affair acted as a revelation. We could have feared that the momentum she had started would run out of steam when the verdict was announced. It would seem, on the contrary, to be a starting point.

(1) Caroline Darian is a pen name, formed from the first names of her brothers, David and Florian. It is under this pseudonym that she published in April 2022, “And I stopped calling you Dad – When chemical submission hits a family published by J.-C. Lattès

(2) #Mendorspas Association https://mendorspas.org/#soumission