CNN
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It was around 1.30 a.m., after the crowds had thinned from the streets of Bordeaux, when Manon felt the prick of a hypodermic needle going into her arm.
“Someone tapped my left forearm. I started to feel numb in the muscle, like you do when you get a vaccine. After about 30 minutes, the injection mark appeared,” she recalled to CNN.
Despite not knowing what she had been injected with – or who had done it – she said she “didn’t want to panic.”
Manon, 22, was one of nearly 150 people in France who reported being pricked with syringes during a nationwide street music festival at the weekend. According to the interior ministry, it remains unclear if date-rape drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB were used in the “needle spiking” attacks, which took place across the country and appear to have involved multiple perpetrators.
Ahead of the festival, which drew crowds of millions of people to the streets, a feminist influencer had warned that calls had been made on social media for women to be targeted with syringes.
After spending 4 a.m. to 7.a.m on Sunday in the emergency room, Manon shared a video of her experience on TikTok.
“It was important for me to raise awareness, because I hadn’t seen any testimonies from people who had been injected,” said Manon, who declined to give her last name for safety reasons.
“We had been told on social media to be careful, but I think people want to know more – how it happens, the symptoms, how it unfolds. It reassured me to talk about it, because at the time, I was completely alone.”
After she got home from the hospital, Manon filed a police report. “It’s important because if we’re too lax, if we say, ‘oh, others will file complaints’, nothing ever changes. I told myself maybe it can have an impact.”
Since Saturday, French police have detained 14 men – aged between 19 and 44 and including both French citizens and foreign nationals, police spokeswoman Agathe Foucault told Radio France Tuesday – but have made no arrests in connection with the needle spikings.
“The police have not identified any perpetrators behind the injections, but the incidents are confirmed,” Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin told CNN affiliate BFMTV Tuesday.
The minister said authorities would also pursue those who had called for the attacks online.
“We are implementing a criminal policy to prosecute those responsible on social media for these very unhealthy injection games targeting women,” Darmanin said.
The feminist influencer Abrège Soeur, who before the festival had warned men on social media were planning such attacks, told CNN the perpetrators’ “objective isn’t only to drug women. It’s to instill fear in them.”
“When people start saying that there will be needle attacks, it spreads in the form of rumor –– some people mention it in group chats, others pick it up, it just gets amplified,” she said, adding, “We need to help women feel safer.”
Manon, who faces a wait of three weeks for her toxicology results, said she had “barely slept the last few days” – but she refuses to be cowed by her experience.
“The Fête de la Musique is meant to be a time of good vibes, music, dancing, having fun. Someone wanted to ruin that moment, to kill that spirit. I told myself I wasn’t going to let it defeat me. I don’t want to be sad or angry. I don’t want to let them win.”
