A FORMER French senator has been been found guilty of drugging a fellow politician to try and sexually assault her.
Joël Guerriau, 68, was found guilty of spiking a glass of champagne which he gave to Sandrine Josso, 50, in a case that sent shockwaves through French politics.
The ex-politician was sentenced to four years in prison for drugging his colleague with the intent to sexually assault her.
Guerriau was a centrist senator for Loire-Atlantique, western France, when he spiked Josso’s drink in November 2023.
National Assembly MP Josso called the verdict “a huge relief”.
It comes months after the case of Gisèle Pelicot, who was drugged by her husband and raped by him and other men over a decade, rocked France.
Her son, David Pelicot came to Guerriau’s trial to show support for the drugged politician.
Josso had gone to see Guerriau “with a light heart to celebrate his re-election” at his flat in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, she told the court.
The pair had been friends for a decade.
When she arrived, Guerriau served her a glass of Champagne, but she quickly realised something was wrong.
Josso told the court she felt like she was “suffocating” with her “throat tightening” after the first mouthful of wine.
She told the court: “He insisted that I should eat, that I should drink.
“He was heavy-handed. My heart was going faster and faster, I was afraid and thirsty.
“I didn’t want to ask for a glass of water [because] I had to show that I was in control.”
When Guerriau went into his kitchen, she saw him holding a sachet of white powder, and came up with an excuse to flee.
Josso told her colleague and long-term friend that she had urgent work in Parliament, and rushed straight to hospital.
There, doctors discovered she had been given MDMA, the drug also known as ecstasy.
Tests found a huge dose of the drug in her blood, more than double a potentially lethal level.
The drugging left Josso suffering serious physical and psychological consequences, and she had to take six months off work to recover.
The politician even had four teeth removed after stress from the incident caused her to grind her teeth.
She told French media: “What I went through is still very painful.
“Psychological trauma feels like being frozen in time… I jump at the slightest thing. I’ve become very vulnerable.”
Guerriau denied that he intended to sexually assault or rape Josso.
He instead claimed he was “worn out” from work, mourning the death of his cat, and depressed because someone close to him had cancer.
Around a month before the attack he had googled “drug and rape”, “effects of ecstasy GHB” and “GHB sales points”.
He claimed there was no link between the drugging and his research, and will appeal the conviction.
