Former senator Joël Guerriau is on trial in Paris for drugging MP Sandrine Josso with MDMA in champagne, allegedly to violate her, during an evening in November 2023. He denies any sexual intent and claims it was an inadvertent mistake. The MP tearfully testified about her panic and severe symptoms.
On January 26, 2026, the trial of Joël Guerriau, a 68-year-old former Les Indépendants senator from Loire-Atlantique, began at the Paris correctional court for administering MDMA to MoDem MP Sandrine Josso, who was 48 at the time, with the alleged intent to violate her. The defendant, who resigned from the Senate on October 5, faces up to five years in prison. He insists it was an inadvertent act during a friendly dinner at his home on rue Monsieur-le-Prince in Paris's 6th arrondissement on November 14, 2023.
That evening, Joël Guerriau invited Sandrine Josso, MP for the 7th constituency of Loire-Atlantique and a longtime friend with no sexual ambiguity, to celebrate his re-election to the Senate where he had sat since 2011. Arriving around 8 p.m., she was surprised to be the only guest. While she waited in the living room, the host prepared two glasses of champagne in the kitchen, out of her sight. Josso took a few sips, noting an odd taste. Guerriau insisted she drink and eat, performed magic tricks, and fiddled with the room's lighting.
After a glass and a half with fajitas, Sandrine Josso experienced heart palpitations, hot and cold flashes, nausea, and tremors. Seeing the accused handle a transparent sachet in a kitchen drawer, she panicked, pretended she needed to return to the National Assembly, and left around 10 p.m. in great distress, asking colleagues to pick her up at the Palais-Bourbon. At the hospital, tests showed 388 nanograms per milliliter of MDMA in her blood, a high concentration exacerbated by alcohol that can cause memory blackouts.
Guerriau attributed his actions to stress from his tenth election campaign: an unnamed fellow senator had given him a powder he believed to be an euphoric phytomedicament. The night before, in an anxiety attack, he poured some into a glass he forgot in a cupboard. During the evening, he belatedly recalled serving the contaminated glasses. "At no moment was I aware of the danger of this product, Mr. President. Sandrine showed nothing," he stated. Deeply emotional, Josso testified: "I thought I was dying," describing feeling herself "slipping away." The hearing continues on January 27.
