"I was so weak, I could barely feel my legs," said Anaïs de Vos. "I was scared and didn't know what was going on."
It was July 2011, and Anais, then 27 years old, was undergoing a recruitment interview with the French Ministry of Culture in Paris.
She doesn't normally drink coffee, but when her interviewer, a senior civil servant named Christian Nègre, offered her a cup, she agreed out of politeness.
She told BBC Global Women that he made it himself but "it tasted terrible... so I only drank half of it".
The meeting initially took place in the office, but after a few minutes, Negre suggested they go outside.
She felt uncomfortable telling Negre that she wanted to go back to the office to use the restroom, so she used the excuse that she was cold and wanted to return to the building. But she said Negre turned away and led the two of them toward the Seine, whereupon she told Negre she needed to find a bathroom.
"He looked me straight in the eyes and said, 'Oh, you want to pee?'"
"I felt like a child. I thought he looked at me in a strange way, almost gloating."
She said he directed her to a locker door under a bridge over the Seine and said: "You can (urinate) here."
Anais is now one of nearly 250 women who believe Negre drugged them between 2009 and 2018, subjecting them to so-called chemical domination, which is the use of drugs to control others.
The concept of chemical submission gained widespread attention in France in 2024, when the husband of Gisele Pelicot was found guilty of sedating her and inviting strangers to rape her while she was unconscious.
"I started to panic," she said. "I imagined him pushing me into the room and closing the door."
Anais thought this was "so weird" and insisted that they move on.
They walked to the Louvre to use the restrooms there, but it cost €1 each time, and her wallet was left in the ministry office. Negre told her he didn't have any cash on him either.
Anais was in pain and despair trying to hold in her pee, so she found a café that allowed her to use their toilet.
"I was feeling very weak," she said. As she walked to the bathroom, she became incontinent and wet her pants.
Thinking back to 2011, Anais felt some comfort because Negre couldn't see her while she was urinating. "At least he didn't see me," she said.
"I was just wearing a skirt, so lucky," she added, explaining that it was easier to hide what happened.
After three hours with Negre, she said she "felt dizzy and weak."
She didn't get the job and was suspicious of him, but could never figure out what made her feel so uncomfortable.
Anais felt that the incident shattered her self-confidence, and over the next few years she chose a less ambitious career path.
In 2019, she received a letter from the police. After meeting with police, she learned they suspected she was one of nearly 200 women Negre was accused of drugging during job interviews, allegedly for positions at the ministry.
"I was shocked," she said. "But I'm glad to know I'm not crazy. Something must have happened that day."
Dozens more victims have since emerged.
Police believe Negre took diuretics, which are used to treat a variety of conditions, including high blood pressure, which causes the body to produce too much urine.
Anais had a thought on the day she met Negre that maybe he had drugged her drink, but she quickly dismissed the thought, telling herself: "This is the Ministry of Culture. This is impossible."
Anais said police told her they found a spreadsheet on Negre's computer that listed the alleged victims, called "Experiment P," and that's how they found her.
She said the document recorded the time the women were interviewed, how long they took diuretics, how long it took them to urinate and what underwear they were wearing.
Looking back now, Anais is convinced that the strange flavor in the coffee Negre made for her was a diuretic.
The prosecutor's office said in a statement released in February that the investigation into Negre began in June 2018 when he was caught by a colleague secretly filming a woman from under his desk.
He was initially suspended and lost his position as regional director of cultural affairs before being fired by the Ministry of Culture in 2019.
Prosecutors said he told investigators in 2018 that he had "created humiliating situations for women" during job interviews.
Many women said they first realized they might be victims when they were contacted by police.
Some people came forward after seeing Anais and other accusers in media reports.
Negre, who is in his 60s, is currently under formal investigation and awaiting trial on suspicion of drugging, invasion of privacy and sexual assault.
The BBC approached Negre through his lawyer about the allegations in this article, but he declined to comment.
Another person mentioned in Negre's notes is Marie-Hélène Brice. Negre interviewed her in 2016 at the Ministry of Culture in Strasbourg, where he was working at the time.
She said he told her she seemed stressed and suggested they go for a walk "to calm her down."
But as they walked along the canal, Marie-Helen, like Anais, felt an uncontrollable urge to pee, which began to cause her pain.
She said Negre told her he knew there was a public toilet nearby, but when they got there they found there was no toilet.
"I really started to feel pain...the pain was unbearable, my face was pale and my face was filled with tears," she said.
Mary-Helen said she had no choice but to urinate in public. She said Negre offered to cover her with his coat.
"I was so embarrassed," she said. "His eyes never left mine."
Mary-Helen said she felt ashamed for years.
Like Anais, she received a call from the police and was told she was one of Negre's victims. "It's really amazing," she added.
Mary-Helen said that in addition to the psychological pain, she also suffered from urinary system problems.
She explained that while the incidents may not fit the mold of what people typically think of as a sexual assault case, she had no doubts about what happened to her: "I was attacked, I was drunk, I was drugged, but to me it was clearly a sexual assault."
French MP Sandrine Josso is concerned about the issue of chemical yield. Giosou emerged as one of the leaders in the field this year after French senator Joel Guerriau was found guilty of sexually assaulting her by spiking her drink with ecstasy.
Gioso believes that France has long not done enough to support drugged women and prosecute perpetrators.
This year she pushed for a pilot program that would allow women who suspect they have been drugged to send blood, urine or hair samples to a lab for testing without making a formal complaint to police.
"People are taking action, victims are reporting more cases and making more complaints, which is important," Joso told BBC Global Women.
But this approach also has its limitations. Anais, Marie-Helen, and many of Negre's other alleged victims had no suspicion that they had been drugged—and blood and urine samples would not reveal the drug unless tested immediately after drugging.
Drugs may stay in the hair longer before being detected, but over time it becomes increasingly difficult to determine when the drug was used.
According to Prof Jean-Claude Alvarez, who is in charge of the pilot project at Raymond-Poincaré AP-HP Hospital in France, using diuretics in this way is "very unusual". He said he had never seen anything like this in his 26 years as a toxicologist.
The laboratory routinely tests for 400 substances and "right now, in France, we are looking for diuretics," he added.
It has been 15 years since Anais met Negre, and seven years since she first spoke to the police.
Mary-Helen described this waiting as "secondary victimization."
"As a victim, I had to prove the impact, see a psychiatrist, write specific notes," she said.
The delay in the case makes what happened even more overwhelming.
"We didn't feel like we were taken completely seriously," Mary-Helen said.
Kalliopi Mingeirou of UN Women told the BBC that governments, police and justice systems needed to do more to combat drug-facilitated sexual assault, saying authorities were facing "very serious challenges" and delays in cases of alleged abuse were "devastating women's lives".
The BBC asked the French police, judiciary and government for criticism of their handling of the case, but they did not respond.
For a long time Mary-Helen remained silent until she no longer felt ashamed.
"I don't need to hide - I'm a victim," she said.
"For me, speaking out is important because it allows some victims to identify themselves, realize they are victims, and then make complaints."
"We live in a world where speaking out is necessary and it's important to talk about sexism and sexual violence."
