By Euronews
Published on
A French court on Tuesday sentenced former senator Joël Guerriau to four years in prison, with 18 months to be served behind bars, after convicting him of drugging a fellow lawmaker with ecstasy with the intent to sexually assault her.
Guerriau, 68, spiked a glass of champagne with MDMA that National Assembly MP Sandrine Josso drank at his Paris apartment in November 2023, the court found. He has denied any sexual motivation and said he would appeal.
“It’s a huge relief,” Josso said shortly after the verdict.
The high-profile trial comes months after France was transfixed by a case in which Dominique Pelicot was jailed for 20 years for repeatedly drugging his then-wife so he and dozens of strangers could rape her.
Josso, 50, told the court she had gone to see Guerriau “with a light heart to celebrate his re-election” at his apartment in Paris’s upscale 6th district. She was the only guest that evening.
“As the evening went on, I discovered an attacker,” she said.
After Guerriau poured her a glass in the kitchen, she noticed it tasted sweet and sticky.
“I thought maybe it was a bad champagne. Then he insisted that we toast again. I found that odd,” she testified.
Josso described soon feeling unwell with a racing heart rate. She left hurriedly and went to hospital, where a toxicology report revealed a high dose of the drug in her blood. Ecstasy was also found at Guerriau’s flat.
Josso’s lawyer Arnaud Godefroy said the lawmaker has struggled with the consequences, including six months off work, physical treatment, psychological and psychiatric care, nightmares, flashbacks and dissociation.
Josso said she had four teeth removed because stress caused her to grind her teeth.
‘In short, I am an idiot’
Guerriau claimed he had poured the powdered ecstasy into a glass the day before their meeting to help calm a panic attack, but decided against taking it and placed the glass back in the cupboard.
“In short, I am an idiot,” he said.
Prosecutor Benjamin Coulon argued that Guerriau “deliberately placed” MDMA in Josso’s champagne and requested a five-year ban from public office and placement on the sex offenders register in addition to the prison term.
Guerriau had voted for the law creating the offence of administering a harmful substance with intent to commit rape or sexual assault, Coulon noted, adding that as an elected official he was duty-bound to “set an example.”
The prosecutor acknowledged Guerriau had no criminal record and had “devoted part of his life to the functioning of French democracy.”
“He did not act on his intentions, it is true, no gestures were made towards Ms Josso, but he did administer drugs to her with the aim of raping her,” Coulon argued. He added ironically: If Guerriau drugged her, was it “to steal her wallet?”
Defence lawyer Henri Carpentier acknowledged that when the case came to light, “the emotion was unanimous, the disgust legitimate,” but warned: “Emotion is a bad adviser, it erases all nuance.”
Guerriau, who served as senator from 2011 to 2025, resigned from the upper house in October and was expelled from the centre-right Horizons party.
France last year adopted the principle of consent into its legal definition of rape, following other European countries including the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.
Additional sources • AFP