French senator arrested for allegedly drugging fellow lawmaker in order to rape her

A senator in France has been preliminarily charged on Friday with drugging a female lawmaker with the intention to rape her. 

French Senator Joël Guerriau was arrested Thursday after fellow lawmaker Sandrine Josso, 48, said that after having a glass of wine in his home in Paris, she felt sick. 

Josso said that she recalled Guerraiu grabbing a "small plastic bag containing something white, in a drawer in his kitchen," according to her lawyer Julia Minkowski.

"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 in reference to Josso, according to Fox News. 

The Paris prosecutor’s office reports that Guerraiu has been preliminarily charged with drugging Josso in order to carry out sexual assault or rape. 

Guerraiu has been suspended from his political party, The Associated Press reports.

His lawyer has come out and made a statement, referring to him as an "an honest man, respected and respectable, who will restore his and his family's honor."