French party suspends senator accused of drugging MP in attempted sex assault
A 66-year-old senator accused of giving a date-rape drug to a female MP as part of a plot to carry out a sexual assault has been suspended from his centrist party and parliamentary group.
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Joel Guerriau is suspected of spiking a glass of champagne he gave to 48-year-old MP Sandrine Josso at his Paris home on Tuesday evening.
He was arrested on Thursday after Josso filed a legal complaint.
The senator and banker faces preliminary charges of "administering to a person, without their knowledge, a substance likely to impair their discernment or control over their actions in order to commit rape or sexual assualt", according to the Paris public prosecutor's office.
Guerriau, who denies the allegations, was placed under judicial supervision on Friday, pending the outcome of the investigation.
His centre-right Horizons party, led by former prime minister Edouard Philippe and allied to President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, said on Saturday that it had suspended the senator and initiated disciplinary proceedings as a first step to kicking him out.
Horizons said it "will never tolerate the slightest complacency towards sexual and sexist violence".
His Senate group, The Independents, said it had also suspended Guerriau and warned he could be expelled.
'State of shock'
Sandrine Josso, a member of the centrist MoDem party, told investigators she felt ill after having a drink on Tuesday night at Guerriau's Paris home, prosecutors said.
The two politicians have known each other for about 10 years but are not in an intimate relationship, they added.
Her lawyer, Julia Minkowski, told AFP news agency that her client saw the senator "grabbing a small plastic bag containing something white, in a drawer in his kitchen".
"She had to deploy monumental physical and intellectual forces to overcome her terror and extricate herself at the last minute from this ambush," Minkowski said, adding that her client was "in a state of shock".
Police searched Guerriau's office and home and found ecstasy.
Tests revealed that Josso had ecstasy in her system, prompting her to lodge a complaint.
'Not a predator'
Guerriau, a senator since 2011, denied any sexual assault plot in a first formal questioning on Friday.
A source close to the investigation said he had told investigators he believed that he had procured a drug from another senate member to induce euphoria, but that it was not ecstasy.
Guerriau "will fight to prove he never intended to administer a substance on his colleague and longstanding friend to abuse her", said his lawyer, Remi-Pierre Drai.
"Guerriau is not a predator. He is an honest man, respected and respectable."
While largely unknown to the general public, Guerriau found himself on the backfoot in December 2016 when a post on the Islamic State armed group appeared on his Twitter account with a close-up picture of a penis.
The senator claimed his account had been hacked and would press charges, but he later dropped the matter.
Widespread support
Josso has received widespread backing.
"Full and complete support to my colleague Sandrine Josso through this ordeal," said MoDem vice president in the National Assembly, Elodie Jacquier-Laforge, in a social media post.
"Neither procrastination, nor complacency, our thoughts are with the complainant," said Environment Minister Christophe Bechu, who is also secretary-general of Horizons.
The allegations, “if proven, are horrific”, he told France Inter radio on Friday, adding that Guerriau “can obviously no longer remain in the party (…) if there is any element of doubt”.
Opposition lawmaker Laurent Keunebroek warned the scandal could have "consequences" on the way elected officials are seen.
A number of French politicians, including ministers, have been investigated on charges of sexual assault.
In 2021 a French mayor and former government minister was sentenced to five years in jail for raping and sexually assaulting a female member of staff.
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French MP candidates forced to stand down following assault allegations
(with AFP)
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