A French member of parliament who was allegedly drugged by a senator has described “trembling and sweating” and fearing she was having a heart attack after drinking champagne spiked with ecstasy, reports The Guardian.
Sandrine Josso, 48, an MP for the centrist MoDem party, spoke out in two television interviews, saying she was “still in a state of shock” after the alleged incident last week.
But, she said, she wanted to raise awareness of the “scourge” of drink-spiking in France. She said it could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any age. “Anyone can go through what I suffered,” Josso told France 5 TV, urging the government to take action.
The French parliament was shaken last week when the centre-right senator, Joël Guerriau, 66, was arrested and charged with “administering to a person, without their knowledge, a substance that could alter their judgment or self-control in order to commit a rape or sexual assault”. He was also charged with possession and use of substances classed as drugs.
Guerriau, who denies any wrongdoing, has been suspended from his centrist Horizons party and faces calls to resign from the upper house, the senate.
Josso has accused the senator of giving her a glass of champagne spiked with the drug ecstasy.
She told BFMTV that she had known Guerriau as a work friend for 10 years and that, last Tuesday, he had invited her to celebrate his re-election to the senate. They were supposed to meet at a restaurant. “But then he said it would be at his [home]...because there would be less people, less noise and he would cook fajitas,” Josso said. She had only been to his home once in the past decade.