Drugged, Assaulted, and Filmed by My Predator “Friends”

“You’re not a victim for sharing your story. You are a survivor setting the world on fire with your truth. And you never know who needs your light, your warmth, and raging courage.” — Alex Elle

Tommy and I walked past the couple, and I gave a little wave. With their hands clutching their drinks, they stood, smiling back at us from the other side of the wire-meshed fence, which lined the perimeter of the pub’s beer garden.

We were heading towards the cricket ground entrance, which sat beyond the garden's boundary. Elton John was due to sing in an hour, so Tommy and I were on a mission to get some drinks before we found our seats.

We knew the duo through Den, a good friend of Tommy’s, and now our business partner in our new restaurant venture—although this would spiral into a macabre finale.

As I waved, I vividly discerned Chris undressing me with his eyes. Inwardly, I felt uneasy but batted it off as some sort of ironic compliment, in my mid-thirties kind of mentality, and excused it as a typical bloke thing. But it stuck in my mind — that vile, lecherous look in his eyes, and all the time, standing next to his girlfriend!

Around two years after that day, Tommy and I, heavy-hearted, were grappling to get our heads and lives around our doomed restaurant; it had been the longest and hardest of the years we had been together. Den had pulled away midway through the venture, and we had lost everything we had invested, along with our sanity.

One afternoon during the aftermath of that debacle, with our daughter at an afterschool club, we took a stroll to chat and contemplate our next move, and headed for a local pub for a glass of wine. As we settled for an outside table to soak up the late afternoon sun, a few of Den’s friends rocked up — Chris and his notoriously erratic girlfriend. Den’s posse gave her the pseudonym of “Mad Angela.”

Chris and Angela were known to love their booze and drugs, but Tommy and I were happy with our glass of wine, as we cradled our downfall and bitterness. The drinks and gossip flowed well with the now larger group, and I was happy to accept their kind offers, getting through several more glasses of Pinot Grigio.

Through this unexpected but pleasant distraction, Tommy, outwardly irritated by my enthusiasm to deflect, left abruptly, snapping at me that he was going to collect our daughter and take her home.

That was my very last memory of that early, sun-kissed evening. After that, there was nothing, a complete blank of nothingness.

As I came to, I had no idea where I was, yet aware it was the early morning hours of another day — yet that could have been any morning, not necessarily the following day ; I had lost the faculty to detect how much time had gone by.

I groggily adjusted my focus to find myself lying in the middle of a bed, in a simple sandstone-coloured bedroom, that I didn't recognise. I sat upright — how long had I been on that bed? Had I been asleep? It hadn’t felt like sleep. It was an odd sense, and I had no recollection of how I got there.

As I tried to get up, I felt heavy and strange, and couldn’t understand what was holding me back. I noticed almost immediately I wasn’t wearing my clothes: ‘Where the fuck are my clothes! I had been wearing them only a moment ago…it felt that, at least! Yet I didn’t know what a moment ago was; my cognitive ability to process time felt weirdly off.

I had been undressed and clothed in this gear by someone, but I had no memory of it. What else happened? I had absolutely no idea what had transpired since sitting having drinks, and I don't even recall getting up to leave. It was as if a switch had gone off, and I had been just that moment switched back on, and slipped back into my body and mind.

This didn’t feel the same as being shitfaced and an idiot; that’s entirely different, with its shameful consequences of the: too many broken but ‘It’s all coming back to me now’ flashbacks. Nothing was coming back! ‘This’ had no memories — this was time travel, but without the perception of time or consciousness.

I was discombobulated and moved in slow motion, my fuzzy head attempting to catch up with reality. I am a fighter, and I fought hard to push forward in this unprecedented situation.

I was alone in the room; still, there was someone who had dressed me in black thigh-high, high-heeled boots, and nothing much else, at some point during that time. But where were they? I had, somehow, appeared in an instant into a bizarre scenario. What had I done, and what had been done to me? How was I able to do anything if I wasn't in my body! Looking back, I worked it out to be almost twelve hours, with the last hour or so, experiencing a jagged psychedelic awareness.

Panicking, I ripped off the boots and tried to work out how to get out of there and back home, and by acting as normal as I possibly could. I am still unable to recall many details, apart from two images, which felt very much like dreams. In the first image, I was sitting on a sofa, not far from a near-naked Chris, and that memory blends in with me bending over in front of him — he is unsmiling in both images. The second snapshot — a woman looking annoyed and muttering something to Angela, that she 'didn’t want anything more to do with it!'

My ability to understand human cues had dissolved, and these two scenes played out as if they were a psychedelic psychological Thriller or just one of those dreams that make no sense. I somehow got home.

It couldn’t be real because it was only a dream. It must have been, and I push it away…

A few weeks pass as I conceal my guilt and anxiety of not knowing if I’ve been unfaithful. Upstairs, in my bedroom, my phone pings, and I pick it up to read the text:

“DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED?”

It was Angela.

I sensed her in a playful mood and felt relieved by this. I was expecting her to be pissed off with me, imagining it was me who was in the wrong. I had been praying it wasn’t as bad as I believed it to possibly be. My thoughts swung from not wanting to remember to hoping it was some confusing mix-up, and that nothing untoward really did take place.

Yet, my thoughts were mostly overpowered with just simply: Fuck!

I immediately called her and whispered, so that Tommy couldn’t hear: “Did something happen with Chris? I just have this weird feeling?”

I feel stupid and embarrassed thinking I am at fault, yet how did I get that drunk? It would have been impossible to escalate to that level after Tommy had left. I would have remembered leaving with them, at least. And even if I had gotten too smashed, I still would have had flashbacks from what happened over the course of the night.

Angela laughed, perhaps placating me, but no, nothing happened — don’t worry — was the gist I got. I felt huge relief, despite a nagging, uncomfortable feeling deep inside of me.

I weakly hoped her reputation for being mad was the truth behind her winding me up, and my nausea and intense hot flush de-escalated. Perhaps nothing that bad happened? I hoped that was the last of it.

A month or so passed, with enough time for me to dampen down the obscurity of my recent amnesia. And by that time, we were too busy having had to leave our sweet cottage, into a doer-upper.

I had finished up with work and started to walk to where my car was parked. My phone pinged. It was her:

“Chantal, I need to tell you something, I need to confess. We drugged you, and filmed you too! Everyone came over that night [Den and his posse]. I am sorry.”

This time, she was serious; her playing around in the past was a cover-up, knowing all too well that she had violated me.

I stuttered. I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to that? Although calling the police flashed through my mind and many times after that day.

Unable to move, it felt like the world had frozen around me. I was numb, except for the thunderbolt of shock that surged through my body. I became an empty mannequin — just like I was that night I was drugged.

Was she just being mad again? I didn’t want to believe the horror of the truth finally coming out: of how many people, of what had happened; of intimate video footage, of my intimate parts, and all without any of my knowledge and consent in any of it.

The rest of the conversation disappeared into oblivion; I don't remember the short journey home. As I walked into our shabby old-fashioned kitchen, my emotions had left me — everything left me. Comprehending the assault turned me into stone. I was dead inside and detached from my mind.

Looking back, I now realise I was in a state of shock, as I stood there, stupefied, darkness clothed me, and I felt as raw and ugly as that disheveled kitchen, inside out and outside in.

Sadly, at that time, there were too many other life-changing situations that were happening around me and many more to follow. For almost fifteen years, I felt like I was banished to purgatory. Was all of this my fault? I knew many of my actions were questionable due to my old self-destructive ways, but no, not being drugged and assaulted, even if I had been tipsy earlier that evening at the pub. But what followed wasn’t my decision.

I didn’t contact the police, although I knew deep down I needed to, but I assumed I was in the wrong, or didn’t have enough evidence, even though there was apparently video footage. I believe I also didn’t want to ‘go there!’ The police came into my life a few months later for other gut-wrenching reasons, and if that hadn’t transpired, I am certain I would have eventually reported the crime.

A few years later, I recognised the woman from that night, working in a local shop. I could see she had acknowledged me, and so I nervously walked up to her and asked, with difficulty, if it was all true. She didn’t want to discuss it, saying it was nothing, yet I knew, deep down, it was something.

A bunch of years later, as I sat in a cocktail bar with a group of friends (true friends), I watched from the other side of the window, Chris walk past the bar. My body wanted to run out and scream at him, yet I didn’t want to confront the actuality of the assault. I offered a bitchy glare, for whatever that was worth. That was ten years ago, and I’ve not seen any of them around the area since.

I'd still find it difficult to know what truly unfolded that night, however, when I learned of the recent news about Gisèle Pélicot being drugged for over ten years by her husband, and abused by hundreds of men, it made me sit up and think.

A paragraph from a BBC online article read: “Gisèle waived her right to anonymity to shift the “shame” back onto the accused, her legal team has previously said. Taking the stand on Thursday, she said she was speaking for “every woman who’s been drugged without knowing it… so that no woman has to suffer.” Source

Gisèle had it a million times worse, and through this, she gave me the balls to speak out about my own small but traumatic story.

© Chantal Weiss 2025. All Rights Reserved

*names have been changed to protect their privacy and identity.