The mystery of France's 'needle attacks' on women

"Someone tapped my left forearm. I started to feel numb in the muscle, like you do when you get a vaccine. After about 30 minutes, the injection mark appeared," 22-year-old Manon told CNN.

She is one of 145 young women who reported being pricked with syringes and becoming unwell while attending Fête de la Musique, an annual open-air music festival that took place in towns and cities across France last weekend.

Instilling fear

Manon and other victims are now waiting for the results of toxicology tests to determine what they were jabbed with. The French interior ministry says it is unclear whether anyone has been injected with rape drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB.

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"Toxicology tests are being done and the investigation is ongoing," a spokesperson said, adding that the authorities are "taking this very seriously". French police have detained 12 suspects, but so far no one has been charged.

The objective of the unidentified assailants "isn't only to drug women. It's to instil fear in them," Abrège Soeur, a feminist influencer, told CNN. "When people start saying that there will be needle attacks, it spreads in the form of rumour – people mention it in group chats, others pick it up, it just gets amplified," she said. Before the festival, Soeur had warned her followers that men on social media were planning syringe attacks.

There were similar spates of reported attacks in France at the 2022 Fête de la Musique and in the UK in October 2021, when nightclubs reopened and students returned to university after Covid pandemic lockdowns. By February 2022, UK police had received more than 1,300 reports of needle spiking over the previous six months, without a single confirmed case or conviction.

'Social panic'

"The reports are always the same," said Le Monde in 2022: "an invisible attacker; traces of a needle in the arm, buttocks or back; symptoms of varying intensity (headaches, vomiting)... and toxicological analyses that turn out to be negative".

According to Psychology Today, there could be an element of "social panic" in reports of "needle-spiking". Young people in 2022 were experiencing fear of vaccinations, worry about passing Covid to someone vulnerable, and guilt about having fun.

Previous needle-spiking panics have been connected to other topical fears, such as HIV transmission. In 1998, an "urban legend" in Canada involved young women on nights out being pricked with contaminated needles and then finding a note in their pocket saying, "Welcome to the world of Aids".

In the recent incidents in France, "some jabs were found to have been caused by tooth picks and some were mosquito bites", said The Times. "Police have shifted their focus" to the theory that social media posts about jabbing women as a "game" "may have both promoted 'prank' spiking and prompted imaginary attacks".