Parisian nightlife professionals are called upon to train in the issues of consent that emerged in the fall under the hashtag #Balancetonbar, as part of a campaign for the reopening of nightclubs on Wednesday.
“Corps à corps, pas sans mon accord” and “Touche pas à mon drink”: Parisian night owls will discover these two campaign slogans against “sexist and sexual violence”, from Wednesday and for a month, on the video screens of 50 night establishments in Paris.
At the same time, the Consentis association will begin to train employees of discotheques, bars and concert halls to better react to situations of sexual violence, and in particular in the care of presumed victims of chemical submission.
The City of Paris, at the initiative of this campaign in which the State, the Regional Health Agency (ARS), professional unions and associations also participate, hopes that “all the clubs participate in these training sessions “and targets around 60 establishments formed during the year, Frédéric Hocquard, deputy in charge of nightlife for PS mayor Anne Hidalgo, told AFP.
In the fall, the testimonies of women victims of rape or sexual assault in bars or nightclubs in France had multiplied on social networks, implicating GHB, nicknamed the “rape drug”.
The Paris prosecutor had announced the opening of an investigation after receiving several complaints from people claiming to have been drugged in bars or nightclubs in the capital.
Even if “on the police level, there is no wave in Paris”, there is on the other hand “a liberation of speech” in the capital vis-à-vis “behavioral problems”, estimates the elected Génération.s who held its Night Council on the subject on Friday.
The elected official of the City wants “to help establishments, bar owners to ensure that their places are + safe +, that no one is afraid to go out”.
The label that the City intends to attribute, which injects 45,000 euros into this campaign, to the clubs which will have been formed “does not mean that ill-intentioned people will not come there”, notes Mr. Hocquard. “But if cases do occur, there will be adequate responses at the staff level.”