Four months after the emergence of the #balancetonbar movement, it is time for soul-searching for night establishments, cited in testimonies on cases of intoxication and sexual violence. As part of a campaign conducted on the occasion of the reopening of nightclubs, Wednesday February 16, Parisian night professionals are called upon to train in the issues of consent that emerged in the fall.
“Hand to hand, not without my consent” and “Don’t touch my drink [“verre”] » : Parisian night owls will discover, from Wednesday, these two campaign slogans against “sexist and sexual violence”. For a month, they will be projected on the screens of around fifty Parisian night establishments.
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. The association, which works for better prevention and awareness of sexual and gender-based violence in the festive environment, will insist in particular on the care of presumed victims of chemical submission.
Sixty establishments trained
The City of Paris, at the initiative of this campaign in which the State, the regional health agency (ARS) of Ile-de-France, trade unions of professionals and associations also participate, hopes that “all the clubs take part in these training courses”. It targets around sixty establishments formed during the year, Frédéric Hocquard (Generation s), deputy mayor of Paris in charge of nightlife, told Agence France-Presse (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, the so-called “rapist” drug. The Paris prosecutor had announced the opening of an investigation after receiving a dozen 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 “freedom of speech” in the capital vis-à-vis “behavioral problems”, believes Mr. Hocquard, who held a night council on the subject on Friday. The chosen one wants “to help establishments and bar owners to ensure that their places are safe [“sûrs”]let no one be afraid to go out”.
The label that the City intends to award, which is injecting 45,000 euros into this campaign, to the clubs that 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. »