“I know it’s not easy to start the story again, but we’ll get through this together, okay?” Leïla Chaouachi is one of five specialized pharmacologists working at Crafs, the Reference Center on Substance Facilitated Aggression, an information platform on the presentation of chemical substances created last October at the addiction monitoring center in Paris .
Since Mazan’s rape trial, the center has received hundreds of requests from victims, their entourage or health professionals.
“We have a constant demand”
“This is the specificity of post-Mazan,” explains the pharmacist to BFMTV. “We have many calls to ancient events. Older people who recognize themselves in Gisèle Pelicot and who want to talk about what they suffered perhaps in the 80s, 70s (…) Today they can perhaps say that I was chemically subjected. because I remember that he gave me, for example, coffee or food like that and that afterwards I didn’t feel well and that I think they were repeatedly raping me because I woke up naked, displaced, in pain.
There are also calls for more recent events. The entire team is trained to listen to victims of sexual and gender violence. On the other end of the line, callers try to understand “what substances may have been administered to them and what period of time needs to be taken into account for the preservation of the evidence,” explains Dr. Leïla Chaouachi, or how they can be supported .
During the discussions, the participants complete a questionnaire drawn up with the medicines agency which allows, in particular, to obtain information about a possible complaint, the type of attack suffered or the analyzes carried out, as well as the online habits of the person to be able to detect the substances that may have been administered to them.
“We will question the victims about their voluntary consumption of medications, drugs, alcohol, with of course a spirit of non-judgment and listening and pedagogy, since we will remember that rape, to speak only of sexual violence, is prohibited whatever the medium. to achieve it,” specifies Leïla Chaouachi.
Requests from healthcare professionals
To contact Crafs, there are several options: a call or an online statement: “victims may not want to have someone on the line immediately,” explains the national expert in chemical investigation to the ANSM. “When they declare online, they can give the option of being called back or not being called back (…) And if they do not want to call or write to us and that is still their right, they can directly access what is useful and useful. reliable information on our platform: they can consult the support circuit directly on our platform as a website available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
According to the specialist, there is freedom of expression in the family, marital or even professional sphere “since people have well integrated that it does not only occur in the festive space.”
Since the Mazan rape trial, the pharmacologist has also observed extensive contact with health professionals.
“The professionals were stunned by Mazan’s rape trial, as they remembered the therapeutic wandering that took place at that time (…) We received calls from professionals who were faced with a current situation that evoked this problem or who remembered situations. who today at home reason on this issue, or failing that we had professionals who called us to train us better and prevent these situations, if they arise, how to react, what to do, etc.”
The announcer speaks during the exchange with the different people who contact Crafs: “Have you found the video?”, “When you wake up, where are you?”, the pharmacologist asks, for example, trying to better understand the symptoms described, the consumption or the monitoring of the different victims. “Would you like a call back?” For Leïla Chaouachi “these questions are extremely vast in reality, the magnitude of the phenomenon. We know that it is much more important than the figures suggest,” she says.
Around 200 substances investigated in hair
“Chemical submission takes away your memories but leaves traces,” reads one of the posters hanging on the wall. Although medications continue to be the most consumed substances according to the ANSM survey, some drugs such as MDMA are gaining ground, describes the head of Crafs. To improve knowledge, the center launched a study on hair samples.
“This study is carried out for two reasons: to try to improve the state of scientific knowledge on chemical submission agents,” explains the coordinator of the GSC scientific research study, but “it is also to evaluate the relevance of systematically collecting the victims.
Hair analyzes look for drugs, medicines and nearly 200 substances, adds Professor Jean-Claude Alvarez, who directs one of the laboratories specialized in this type of analysis at the Raymond Poincaré hospital in Garches and who collaborates with Crafs.
“After three days there is nothing left in the blood or urine (…) We will call the victim again after a month and we will do this hair analysis and there we will work in very short segments (…). an extraordinary matrix,” explains Professor Álvarez, “everything you take is fixed in the hair, it is a month.”
The study began a year ago, according to Leïla Chaouachi: “To date we have had around sixty inclusions.” The specialist points out that the lock of hair is cut before marking the part closest to the root to “orient” the hair and “allow dating.”
“It is extremely important that we have access to toxicological analyzes whether of blood, urine or hair, but the important thing is to understand that this access is only interesting if it is with expert laboratories,” he adds.
“We have a method that allows us to search for approximately 200 molecules,” develops Jean-Claude Alvarez, “everything that is surprising, new synthetic drugs – we are a reference laboratory – and then, of course, all drugs.”
“The hair is really high-flying,” he says. “We are going to segment the hair, centimeter by centimeter, we are going to extract the molecules from the hair once we have transformed them into powder and we are going to pass them through large mass spectrometers.” Among the samples, a specific analysis for GHB is reserved.
Last December, the ANSM announced that it was working with laboratories that market drugs that could be diverted for the purposes of presenting chemical substances, “in order to establish appropriate measures to alert and protect potential victims.” For example, changing the visual appearance (unusual coloring or texture) or adding an identifiable flavor or odor to the medication.
Source: BFM TV
