“I thought I died”: the first public testimony of Sandrine Josso increased the pressure on Senator Joël Guerriau, accused of having drugged the MP with a view to sexually assaulting her, while the President of the Senate calls for ” withdrawal” of the elected official.
“I just had the necessary survival instinct.” Less than a week after the events, Sandrine Josso came out of silence to speak her truth on France 5.
The member for Loire-Atlantique said she went “with confidence” and “in all friendship” to celebrate the re-election of her colleague senator, elected in the same department. “A friend for ten years” whose “insistence” on toasting champagne several times – whose “sweet” taste surprises her – while playing with the light dimmer in the living room, she is surprised by.
“He turned the light on very brightly, then turned it down,” a technique known to “increase the effectiveness of the drug,” as the doctors at the Lariboisière hospital where she ended up spending the night later explained to her.
Seized with “palpitations” and “sweating”, she then saw her host put away “a white bag under the work surface” in her kitchen – ecstasy, which the police found in the same place during a search.
“There, I understand,” but “I was already under the influence of drugs, my legs were shaking,” she continued. To escape the trap, she orders a taxi and realizes that her host follows her “in the elevator, in the courtyard, to the taxi”.
“I was panicked, my heart was beating… I felt like I was having a heart attack,” added the woman who says she is still “in post-trauma” and “jumps all the time.”
Wanting to make her case an example, Ms. Josso estimated that “we can all suffer what I suffered” and that “(her) duty is to raise awareness”, but also to “enjoin the government to do something in relation to this scourge” of chemical submission.
“Extreme seriousness of the facts”
As for her alleged attacker, “I don’t care about him, he does what he has to do,” she said.
Others took a position in his place, notably Gérard Larcher, who “invited” Mr. Guerriau “to withdraw from all his activities linked to his mandate as senator”, in particular “his functions as secretary in the Office of the Senate and vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
A request motivated by “the extreme seriousness of the facts alleged against the senator and (the) principle of dignity which attaches to the exercise of the parliamentary mandate”, underlined the President of the Senate.
An approach immediately supported by the leader of the communist senators, Cécile Cukierman, for whom “it is the least that can be done”, both “out of respect for the complainant and out of respect for the institution”.
Indicted Friday evening for “administration without the knowledge of (Ms. Josso) of a substance likely to impair her discernment or control of her actions in order to commit rape or sexual assault”, as well as “detention and use of substances classified as narcotics”, Mr. Guerriau has since been placed under judicial control with a ban on coming into contact with the complainant.
Although he contests, through his lawyer, any malicious intent and pleads “a manipulation error”, the senator – who does not benefit from parliamentary immunity in this “flagrant” affair – is already released from all shares.
The first political sanctions have already fallen: in quick succession on Saturday, his political party Horizons, then his parliamentary group decided to suspend him and open disciplinary procedures which could lead to his exclusion.