{"id":12511,"date":"2025-12-20T11:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/nearly-200-women-allege-ex%e2%80%91hr-manager-at-french-culture-ministry-spiked-drinks-to-humiliate-them-in-job-interviews\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T11:00:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T11:00:41","slug":"nearly-200-women-allege-ex%e2%80%91hr-manager-at-french-culture-ministry-spiked-drinks-to-humiliate-them-in-job-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/nearly-200-women-allege-ex%e2%80%91hr-manager-at-french-culture-ministry-spiked-drinks-to-humiliate-them-in-job-interviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 200 women allege ex\u2011HR manager at French culture ministry spiked drinks to humiliate them in job interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PARIS, Dec 20 — Hiyam Zarouri was delighted when a senior civil servant at France’s prestigious culture ministry reached out to her on Linkedin offering the then jobless 25-year-old career advice.<\/p>\n

But instead, she left their meeting in pain feeling utterly humiliated.<\/p>\n

She claims Christian Negre slipped a powerful diuretic into her coffee to make her urinate, then took her on a three-and-a-half-hour walk in central Paris in high heels.<\/p>\n

“I started to have cold sweats, chills and hot flashes, a bloated stomach, and my feet really, really hurt,” Zarouri, now 35, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“I thought I was going to die.”<\/p>\n

Zarouri is one of around 200 women to have accused Negre, a former human resources manager, of having spiked their hot drinks to belittle them.<\/p>\n

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They say he watched his female interviewees writhe in pain, some to the point of relieving themselves in front of him.<\/p>\n

Unlike other women who accuse him, Zarouri eventually did manage to insist they return to the ministry — where he had said she should leave her bag — so she could go to the toilet.<\/p>\n

When she came out, he was waiting just outside. She said she blamed herself for drinking the coffee and wearing heels.<\/p>\n

“I told myself it was my fault,” she said.<\/p>\n

It was not until the media reported on similar cases four years later that she understood.<\/p>\n

‘Unacceptable’ <\/strong><\/p>\n

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Negre was eventually charged with “administering a harmful substance” to the women without their knowledge, “sexual assault” by a person abusing their authority and “invasion of privacy”.<\/p>\n

Investigators have since discovered that between 2009 and 2018 he preyed on 197 women job-seekers of all ages, whose names and reactions to the drug he listed in a spreadsheet, a source close to the case told AFP on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

But many victims, including Zarouri, feel the probe is taking too long, and worry that Negre — who is under judicial control but can still work — could still target someone else.<\/p>\n

“It’s unacceptable,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n

“He needs to be kept away from other women.”<\/p>\n

Negre in 2018 admitted to investigators he had “imposed humiliating situations on women” during job interviews. The ministry fired him the following year.<\/p>\n

Regional newspaper Ouest France<\/em> reported in October that he had spent two years working as a teacher at a business school in Normandy under a pseudonym.<\/p>\n

Contacted by AFP, his lawyer Vanessa Stein said he did not wish to comment.<\/p>\n

France has become more aware of the use of drugs to commit abuse since a court last year sentenced a man to 20 years in jail for drugging his then-wife Gisele Pelicot and recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her.<\/p>\n

In another case, a paedophile surgeon who practised until retirement was convicted this year of sexually abusing more than 290 patients.<\/p>\n

Both kept a meticulous record of their crimes.<\/p>\n

The Women’s Foundation, a feminist association, says the diuretic case is just as important as these, and has provided legal counsel to 45 of the accusers.<\/p>\n

The file bears all the hallmarks of a typical sexual abuse case — from lack of consent to a desire to dominate, the foundation’s Floriane Volt said.<\/p>\n

“It’s 200 women whose dignity can be trampled, whose only interesting feature is a line on an Excel spreadsheet,” she said.<\/p>\n

Overstretched magistrates <\/strong><\/p>\n

The source with knowledge of the case said the investigation was still ongoing — but slowly due to the number of victims, lack of resources and amount of paperwork.<\/p>\n

In Paris, each investigating magistrate handles around 100 cases, and has to give priority to those in which suspects are detained.<\/p>\n

In the probe, a single court clerk has to inform each of the 197 civil parties of any new step taken by registered mail, the source said, and every time a victim seeks an expert opinion the whole process is again delayed.<\/p>\n

But investigators are to meet all the complainants early next year to give them an update, AFP has learnt.<\/p>\n

A trial in a criminal court will likely also take time to organise.<\/p>\n

But an administrative court in 2023 awarded one woman €12,000 (RM57,078 today) in damages, finding the French state guilty for failing to protect her and another six women.<\/p>\n

Negre had taken the woman for a walk in 2012. She soon felt a painful urge to urinate, and was forced to do so in front of him under a bridge. — AFP<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Nearly 200 women allege ex‑HR manager at French culture ministry spiked drinks to humiliate them in job interviews<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS, Dec 20 — Hiyam Zarouri was delighted when a senior civil servant at France’s prestigious culture ministry reached out to her on Linkedin offering the then jobless 25-year-old career advice. But instead, she left their meeting in pain feeling utterly humiliated. She claims Christian Negre slipped a powerful diuretic into her coffee to make…<\/p>\n

Read More “Nearly 200 women allege ex\u2011HR manager at French culture ministry spiked drinks to humiliate them in job interviews”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}