If the allegations prove true, one woman's tale of being raped by a French police officer while in custody for public drunkeness have all the marks of a horrible abuse of power.

The 47-year-old woman, whose name wasn't released, first came into contact with police in the Parisian suburbs after stumbling around and yelling drunkenly on the night of May 16th 2012. 

She was then taken to a police station in the town of Mantes-la-Jolie at around 11pm, Le Parisien reported. Things soon took a much darker turn.

A female police officer allegedly made her take off her bra in front of male officers. And according to the victim, a policeman at the station made her write “I love you” on a piece of paper which was then passed to a single colleague.

At around 2am the woman claims the officer came into her cell and raped her twice. The assault, she says, was not carried out with threats or violence, but with her attacker's hand over her mouth to stop her from crying out.

She finally left the police station the next morning at around 4:30am and soon took an overdose of pills. After being rushed to the hospital she told doctors she had been raped, which led to the unnamed officer's arrest.

The policeman didn't deny the sex had taken place, instead he said the encounter was consensual. He claimed no one ordered her to remove her bra and insisted she later pressed his hand to her bare chest. 

By way of explaining why he had sex with a drunken prisoner at the police station, the officer said he'd done it to get revenge on a woman he was dating and whom he suspected was cheating on him.

In a highly similar case, police officers from an elite Paris police unit were charged in connection with the rape of a Canadian woman who alleges she was assaulted at police headquarters after a night of drinking.