Former French senator discovered guilty of drugging MP

A former French senator has been discovered guilty of spiking an MP’s drink with ecstasy in order to sexually assault her.

Joel Guerriau acquired a four-year prison sentence – 18 months of which are to be served behind bars – and, according to native media, was ordered to pay Sandrine Josso €5,000 (£4,348) in damages for emotional misery.

Guerriau, now 68, had invited Josso, 50, to his Paris flat in November 2023. He later admitted serving her a drink spiked with MDMA, but maintained it was an accident and denied having any intention of assaulting her.

Shortly after the verdict on Tuesday, Josso said it was a “huge relief”, AFP reports. Meanwhile, Guerriau’s attorneys said he would appeal.

According to court paperwork quoted by French media, Josso said she had gone to Guerrieau’s home three years in the past to have fun his re-election when she began feeling unwell after ingesting from a champagne glass.

“I had gone to visit a friend and I discovered an aggressor,” she said on Monday while giving evidence in the trial.

“He looked at me insistently, I’d never seen him that way. I didn’t want to show him my weakness, because I was worried that if I told him I wasn’t feeling well, he would’ve forced me to lie down.”

Josso recalled managing to depart the flat and, with the help of a colleague, went to hospital where a toxicology report confirmed her blood had thrice the leisure dose of MDMA.

Guerriau instructed the court he had been going through a period of depression, and had meant to take the drug himself the evening before. He did not finish up doing so and by accident supplied the glass containing MDMA to Josso the following night, he said.

“I feel sorry for Sandrine,” Guerriau instructed the court in Paris. “I am disgusted with myself, with my recklessness and my stupidity.”

He added: “We don’t talk about the effects of these drugs enough… All I want is to speak out on the dangers of these products.”

Asked about the several web searches he made around ecstasy and the drug GHB, he said he had no recollection.

“I was on the train, thoughts and ideas just come to you,” he instructed the court, including authorities members needed to show an curiosity in “all current events”.

Guerriau, a centre-right senator from the Horizons social gathering, was suspended when the costs against him came to gentle. He resigned as a senator last October.

Josso, who is still an MP for the centre-right MoDem, has become a staunch campaigner against so-called chemical submission – drug-facilitated sexual assault.

“What I went through is still very painful,” Josso said, talking to French media forward of the trial starting.

“Psychological trauma feels like being frozen in time… I jump at the slightest thing. I’ve become very vulnerable.”

Josso has gone on to be part of an affiliation against chemical submission, set up by Caroline Darian – the daughter of Dominique Pelicot, who in 2024 was discovered guilty of drugging his spouse Gisele and inviting males to rape her in their home for over a decade.

Josso was usually in court during the Pelicot trial. This week, Darian and her brother David attended the proceedings in the Guerriau case.