diff --git a/app/helpers/html_to_string_helper.rb b/app/helpers/html_to_string_helper.rb
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..682bf536f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/app/helpers/html_to_string_helper.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+module HtmlToStringHelper
+  def html_to_string(html)
+    string_with_tags = html
+      .gsub(/<br[ ]?[\/]?>/, "\n")
+      .gsub('</p>', "\n")
+      .gsub('<p>', '')
+
+    strip_tags(string_with_tags)
+  end
+end
diff --git a/app/views/new_gestionnaire/dossiers/champs/_textarea.html.haml b/app/views/new_gestionnaire/dossiers/champs/_textarea.html.haml
index 39f497c12..5e2b2164c 100644
--- a/app/views/new_gestionnaire/dossiers/champs/_textarea.html.haml
+++ b/app/views/new_gestionnaire/dossiers/champs/_textarea.html.haml
@@ -4,4 +4,4 @@
   row: 6,
   placeholder: champ.description,
   required: champ.mandatory,
-  value: sanitize(champ.value)
+  value: html_to_string(champ.value)
diff --git a/spec/helpers/html_to_string_helper_spec.rb b/spec/helpers/html_to_string_helper_spec.rb
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..444cf4805
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spec/helpers/html_to_string_helper_spec.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+describe HtmlToStringHelper do
+  describe "#html_to_string" do
+    describe 'does not change plain text' do
+      it { expect(helper.html_to_string('text')).to eq('text') }
+    end
+
+    describe 'deals with <br>' do
+      it { expect(helper.html_to_string('new<br>line')).to eq("new\nline") }
+      it { expect(helper.html_to_string('new<br/>line')).to eq("new\nline") }
+      it { expect(helper.html_to_string('new<br />line')).to eq("new\nline") }
+    end
+
+    describe 'deals with <p>' do
+      it { expect(helper.html_to_string('<p>p1</p><p>p2</p>')).to eq("p1\np2\n") }
+    end
+
+    describe 'strip other tags' do
+      it { expect(helper.html_to_string('<i>italic</i>')).to eq('italic') }
+    end
+  end
+end