VIRTON – Since Saturday, as far as Luxembourg, young people say they were drugged at a ball in Belgium.
The Arlon prosecutor’s office evoked seven complaints from young women on Tuesday, including four minors.
Robin, a 25-year-old physiotherapist in Luxembourg, was not on his first evening last Saturday when he went to the Dampicourt ball in Belgium, about thirty kilometers from the Grand Duchy.
If he describes himself as a “big social worker” he had never experienced this. “I could abuse on alcohol. But what was described to me (because I don’t remember anything from 1h/1h30) never looked like me in the evening. I remember having finished my drink, dancing for a few minutes and then nothing, blackout before waking up the next day, with several bruises. Friends were present and took care of me, I can’t thank them enough”.
A testimony that echoes many others during an evening which was followed by a series of complaints from young people, believing that they had been drugged by an injection or via their drink.
Caroline’s daughter, an employee of a perfumery in the Grand Duchy, had a trace “red with a pale red halo at the level of a buttock”, which she attributes to a mysterious bite. “There were 2,300 people under a marquee. Everyone was jostling. She didn’t feel anything,” her mother said. After losing consciousness on the spot, the 19-year-old girl was seized with “hallucinations and extreme agitation in the ambulance which was taking her to Arlon hospital. She woke up at 7 a.m. the next day in the emergency room. A complaint has been filed but the consequences are psychological. “She no longer wants to sleep alone and tells me that she is not likely to come out. Many young people are shocked”.
Mid-night questions
According to this mother, who the next day launched an appeal for witnesses, her daughter was clearly drugged. “There have been cases elsewhere, obviously this product does not leave traces. She had had four beers. Apparently there was no abuse or theft, it was free,” she says.
Augustin was also there. The opportunity to see friends again for this young student in Liège, originally from around Montmédy in France. He arrived at the ball “around 8:30 p.m. for the opening. I drank very little. Five six beers but my condition was catastrophic. I couldn’t stand up anymore, my head was heavy, I was nauseous. I was really not well at all”. Returning around 3 a.m., Augustin claims to have gone the next day around 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. at the Mont-Saint-Martin hospital to take a blood test. “When I woke up I was like ‘I have to go get tested’ because I knew it wasn’t normal. (…) I’m used to festivals. I know my alcohol outfit and I know I’m not in this state after five or six beers.
“I was taken in urgently, so that any traces would not disappear,” says Augustin, who, on the other hand, has no trace of a bite and believes that he was drugged in his glass. “I turned out to be GHB positive. I don’t take any drugs. I just had beer. I went to get each of my glasses. If I had voluntarily taken GHB, I would have no interest in letting people know and going to be tested. I was likely to have problems more than anything else”. Augustin assures that one of his acquaintances, a young woman, transported to the hospital, also tested positive for this substance the next day.
“It’s hard to protect yourself even if you’re careful”
“Around 9:30 p.m. there were already 3-4 people sitting on the floor in very poor condition. But I thought to myself that they had drunk too quickly. So I don’t know.” For him, it is not a psychosis linked to the mysterious injections in France. “I had already attended the last edition of this ball. It wasn’t like that. I have already done small balls like that, there have never been so many complaints and problems, ”continues Augustin, who ensures that the questions began to come in the middle of the evening. “We heard a few words but they were guesses. Around 1:30-2 a.m., people began to question themselves. It felt a little in the atmosphere and at the exit of the ball. I was lucky to stay with my friends who took care of me. It was the only chance I had”.
“The safety of our participants is our top priority. We are sincerely sorry for the people who suffered these acts, ”reacted in a press release, the organizers of the CDJ Dampicourt.
“One thing struck me, there were a lot of privileges at the level of the searches. Some friends told me they didn’t get searched because they knew the bouncer. It was quite superficial, ”says Augustin, who does not want to give up going out. “I tell myself that it’s scary, but we’re young. If we start to be afraid of everything, we cannot live. It stays in the back of your head. But I’m not going to stop having fun for that. It’s hard to protect yourself, even if you’re careful. I think it can happen anywhere”.
The parquet floor of Arlon evoked, Tuesday, seven complaints of young women including four minors. According to Caroline, mother of a victim, the figure reached ten yesterday. She says that she collected fifteen testimonies from young men and women via social networks and ensures that five people were hospitalized that night. “The investigation must make it possible to verify the declarations”, confided yesterday Anne-Sophie Guilmot, deputy of the prosecutor of the king to The essential, some symptoms may also “resemble alcohol intoxication”. The case is taken “very seriously”, she added.
(Nicolas Martin)