[CONTENT WARNING: This article contains references to sexual assault]
The person whose allegations against Angoulême Festival operator 9e Art+ shook the French comics industry this year has waived her anonymity and spoken out. As the anonymous ‘Chloé’, her case was revealed in a damning Humanité investigation in January, becoming a lightning rod for the movement against the longtime operator which today has brought one of the world’s largest comics festivals to a standstill.
What we previously knew was that, while working for 9e Art+ during the 2024 edition of the Angoulême Festival, she was reportedly raped and dismissed by the company shortly after disclosing the incident. The news had a massive impact, helping galvanise ad hoc protests at this year’s festival weekend (January 29 to February 2, 2025) and once more raising the ever-present issue of sexism, sexual violence and harassment inside and outside the French comics industry. It also emphasised some of the troubling accusations concerning 9e Art+’s near two-decade tenure as operator of the five-decade old festival, and 9e Art+ boss Franck Bondoux – namely toxic management and misogyny. At 2025’s edition “Chloé, on te croit!” [tr. ‘Chloé, we believe you!’] was a rallying cry and widely given voice on the streets or in booths. The breaking point for years of discontent against a company that has also faced accusations of over-commercialisation, financial irregularities and poor treatment of creators.
But Chloé is a real person. While having chosen up to now to maintain her anonymity to protect her future work prospects, on Friday she chose to come forward to tell her story on TV station France3. Her name is Élise Bouché-Tran.
As she said in her interview [note: translations via DeepL]:
“I have to show my face, because it’s not my place to be ashamed of what happened“
A polyglot able to speak eight languages and having spent over three years working overseas, in September 2023 Élise returned to France and began working for the Angoulême Festival organiser 9e Art+ as their communications manager. She confirms the allegations of a toxic work environment in the France3 interview – mentioning constantly irate, vocal, demanding, and impatient management which drained the morale of herself and her colleagues. Over the festival weekend she was not afforded time to see any of the lavish exhibitions she was promoting or even to go outside.
Her reported assault happened after-hours, in the late evening of Friday, January 26 2024 – the midpoint of a festival that annually runs from Thursday to Sunday and spills into the cafés, restaurants, bistros and bars lining the streets of the medieval city. Élise can’t recall what happened but knows she woke up naked in the morning hours of Saturday, January 27 in the bed of a contractor who was also working at the festival. “The person next to me told me that we had slept together,” she said, “but I had no memory of the evening.” It later dawned on her that she may have been drugged.
To France3, she said:
“I told myself that what had happened to me was impossible: I couldn’t bring myself to use the word ‘rape’. What shocked me the most was that the person involved was not questioned and that I was asked to continue working with him after the festival.”
She immediately mentioned this to her colleagues and she was sent to speak to a 9e Art+ human resources manager who suggested she take the morning-after pill. Élise also told her own manager about what happened that night but, according to her, their only response was to thank her for her services during the festival and that she would receive a bonus. As it turned out she neither received the bonus nor kept her job.
Visiting Paris after the conclusion of the festival, Élise received a phone call. While she doesn’t name names, a male manager – possibly Franck Bondoux – called her asking if she was going to press charges. She hadn’t at that time, but after seeing a doctor she was convinced to do so. Once she told them she would, communication suddenly stopped. “From that moment on, I heard nothing more from anyone,” she says.
On March 4 she returned to work in Angoulême after a leave of absence, she was summoned by her employer who allegedly mentioned “unacceptable behaviour” on her part. She was sent home and forbidden to “talk to anyone”.
She also recalls:
“When I called him to explain what had happened to me, he asked me questions about whether I had flirted with [the contractor], how I was dressed… I even received an email describing me as a ‘seductress’. He had conducted an internal investigation among my colleagues… It was sickening.”
The next she knew, she received a letter informing her of a preliminary interview prior to dismissal; and she was officially fired on March 14.
Isolated, the shock of the incident and the sudden dismissal by her employer had a catastrophic effect on her mental health (she said to France3 she remains on anti-depressants to this day). Fired for gross misconduct, Élise has been unable to move on with her career or remain in the cultural sector as, she says, every interviewer requires references from her previous employer. She has been out of work for over a year and, without a sustainable income, she moved back in with her parents. She is reportedly ineligible for state unemployment. In pursuing legal recourse Élise has accumulated growing travel expenses. She has two parallel cases taking place in Angoulême, a long distance from her present location, necessitating train journeys and overnight stays as they slowly move through the system.
Again, the France3 interview:
“It was really a double punishment: there’s the rape, and I’m being punished for it. It plunged me into depression, I gained 15 kg… It was horrible.”
Élise’s case was discovered by Humanité reporter Lucie Servin in the process of her investigation into the management dysfunctions of 9e Art+. Launched in the closing months of 2024, Lucie had been systematically contacting former employees of the company and had a meeting with Élise in December. Over coffee Élise revealed to Lucie that she had been dismissed after reporting the assault. “I was stunned,” Lucie said over email, “Then I worked on the file with her lawyer.”
When the investigation was released on January 24, 2025 – mere days before this year’s festival – the revelations were seismic. Immediately support for Élise, whose identity in the piece was concealed by the pseudonym ‘Chloé’, sprang up with groups simultaneously infuriated by the Franck Bondoux/9e Art+ regime and appalled by her abandonment. Isolated for months, Élise was added to a WhatsApp group of authors which provided her mental and moral support. A crowdfunding campaign was launched to help cover her expenses. While anger towards 9e Art+ had been steadily growing over the past two decades, Élise’s story was the spark that gave many the impetus to campaign for the firm’s removal from the Angoulême Festival.
A coalition of author unions known now as Inter-Org BD, co-initiated by anti-sexism campaign group MeTooBD, started a petition in April that rapidly accrued over two thousand signatures – threatening boycott. It decried the toxic practices of 9e Art+, demanded the end of its contract (up for renewal in May), and an open call for a replacement. With signatures from huge names in global and French comics such as Alison Bechdel, Posy Simmonds, Julie Doucet, Art Spiegelman, and Catherine Meurisse, publishers leaned on Angoulême Festival owner Association FIBD to end its partnership with 9e Art+ and engage in an open call process. While such a process took place, the decision to resume the contract with 9e Art+ by stealth on November 8 (they wanted a joint proposal with public body Cité de la BD) has brought the 52-year old festival to the point of near collapse as author boycotts became fully widespread and publishers rapidly withdrew. Further, leaked reports of planned tokenistic women-centric programming led to accusations of ‘pink’-washing and a parallel ‘Girlcott’ movement emerged.
Through it all Élise’s case has not been forgetten. Following a week of crash meetings to save the festival, on Sunday, November 16 a cadre of 285 autrices (women authors/creators) that included members of MeTooBD and the Collectif des créatrices de BD contre le sexisme (Collective of Women Comic Book Creators Against Sexism) published an open letter in Humanité saying:
“In January 2025, Chloé’s story during the previous edition of the Festival fueled an anger that was already difficult to contain….Chloé is not a unique case. Her story is one of hundreds of others, covered up by silence and omission. This lack of humanity and silence sends a clear and unacceptable message to victims. And we will not tolerate it.”
Also adding
“…we believe that the Angoulême festival still falls short, whether on issues of sexist, sexual, racist, ableist, or LGBTphobic violence.”
Meanwhile the author groups who mounted the mass boycott that escalated on November 8 have declared terms. Both Snac-BD’s FIBD 3.0 manifesto and the Inter-Org BD demands list include the necessity for training and protections against sexism, sexual harassment and violence in any future organisational structure, as well as during the annual festival itself. As of now, Angoulême Festival 2026 is all but officially cancelled with 9e Art+ on borrowed time. The Association FIBD, owner of the festival and its copyrights, sits in disgrace and an expanded version of an amalgamation of stakeholders including public partners, author unions and publisher groups, the Association for the Development of Comics in Angoulême (ADBDA), will shape the festival’s future.
At this time Élise with the help of her lawyer Arié Alimi has two cases running simultaneously in the French courts. Her rape is being handled as a criminal case by the Angoulême District Court, with the official charge of “rape involving chemical submission” (faits de viol avec soumission chimique), which in US legal terms is drug-facilitated sexual assault, DFSA. The alleged perpetrator denies all wrongdoing. As for the employment tribunal against her former employer, 9e Art+, that will also be seen in the coming weeks in Angoulême.
Also reported by France3 on Friday, Élise’s lawyer Arié Alimi expressed confidence in her chances of winning the case:
“There is a somewhat surprising proximity between Élise reporting the rape to her employer and the date of her dismissal. It is important to note that Élise’s safety was not taken into consideration when she reported the rape. We have a series of testimonies and evidence that will enable her employer to be convicted for acts of gross negligence…Everyone needs to understand that when a victim speaks out, their words must be taken seriously. The festival’s management organisation and the public authorities were inflexible and refused to see the truth.”
France3 also gave time to 9e Art+’s legal representative Muriel Dehiles, who responded to the claims made. She immediately dismissed the criminal case and the company’s culpability since it took place “outside work hours” and having been committed by someone from outside the company (a contract worker). She also claimed that toxic management doesn’t exist in 9e Art+, that there was no evidence to back it up, and that the situation is being exploited by outside actors.
As for the employment tribunal case and the circumstances of Élise’s dismissal, Muriel Dehiles claims that the company was unaware of the alleged sexual assault having occurred at the time she was fired.
According to 9e Art+’s lawyer,
“The company’s CEO [Bondoux] had suggested that she file a complaint. Until then, she had only mentioned one thing: the fact that she had been drugged. When she was sent a dismissal notice on March 4, 2024, she wrote a letter to her employer the next day entitled ‘Revelations of acts of rape’. The rape allegation was made after the dismissal procedure was initiated, not the other way around.”
Also:
“Before the dismissal procedure, she had been interviewed by the director of 9e Art+, as she had requested a meeting. The questions were asked without any judgment. I never heard Franck Bondoux make any judgment about Elise’s attitude towards the alleged rapist.”
While the reporting of the experience has helped crystalise and drive change in the festival, the literal trials ahead could bring about their own form of profound change for Élise – whose life and career has yet to fully move on from her experiences in the early months of 2024.
