France: “My father let 72 men rape my mother, I learned I was his second victim” reveals Dominique Pelicot’s daughter

In the Criminal Court of Avignon in the south, the trial of 51 men accused of raping the same woman began on Monday (03.09.2024) while her 70-year-old husband Dominique Pelicot, who for a decade drugged her to be raped by him and dozens of unknown men. Caroline Darian – whose father Dominique Pelicot is tried in France for keeping his wife and Gisele’s mother drugged for decades inviting unknown men to rape her, wrote the book entitled “Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler papa” about how revelations about her father’s sick action destroyed her life. The family “room of horror” as Caroline Darian calls him, was suddenly revealed, four years ago, on Monday, November 2, 2020. France was experiencing the pandemic crisis and Darian had just taken the six-year-old son from school wearing a mandatory mask. The phone call that changed everything Her father, Dominique Pélicot sent his grandson a reassuring message online: “My poor boy. Be brave. Love, Grandpa”. Just hours later, the phone rang. She was Darian’s mother, Gisele: “Your father will go to jail”. And so, what the girl called until then her boring but successful world – “wife, son, home, work I loved” – was overturned. Her father was accused of drugging her mother and wife for 50 years – the woman she had known and loved when both were 18 years old – and of inviting dozens of men to rape her for at least a decade. Suddenly, the Pelicot family was at the heart of a terrifying case that has now reached court and has frozen France and the whole world. As Darian later wrote: “You don’t know the value of boring until you lose it,” as she learned with the “family flood” that followed. The details of that 2020 call that changed everything were, as Darian explains in her memoirs “And I Stopped Calling You Daddy” almost too grim to accept them. The book changes some names [Dominique becomes Louis for example] but explains how the case unfolded, how her mother – in real life Gisèle Pélicot – called her on that day of 2020 from her home in the small town of Mazan, 20 miles northeast of Avignon, in southern France, to reveal that her husband, 67 years old, had been caught in the act of filming the skirts of three women in a supermarket and imprisoned for 48 hours. Meanwhile, the police had confiscated his phone, video camera, and computer. There they found images allegedly showing Gisele, also 67 years old then, sleeping, drugged and raped. After searching about 20,000 digital images, police counted 92 rapes committed by 72 men, of which 51 were identified. “My love, it’s true,” Gisele told her surprised daughter. “I had to see some of the photos at the police station. I thought my heart would stop beating.” Until then, neither woman had the slightest idea. Turns out Dominique had given rape drugs to his wife. And apparently he wasn’t the only victim. Yesterday, Tuesday (03.09.2024) Caroline Darian collapsed as at the trial she was heard that among her father’s many photographs there were photographs of his daughter as an adult wife with her underwear, which she had compared to similar images of his wife and shared with others. When Caroline called her two brothers, they were just as surprised. But then one remembered the last dinner he had spent with his parents during the 2018 summer vacation. “Just a few minutes after Mom sat she was swinging in her chair like she was drunk,” she is quoted as saying. “Suddenly her whole body had lost all of its energy”. “It happens. It is better to take her to bed,” his father said then. But Darian adds: “In fact the cocktail of drugs, which had thrown into the glass with rosé wine, had begun to influence”. Immediately after being informed of their father’s actions four years ago, the three brothers rushed southward to help their mother. In Avignon, they met with the police team leading the investigation. The officers explained that their father had not just returned, but recruited dozens of men in online forums to rape their mother “without financial gain”. “The absolute perversion”, writes Caroline. “The father, who always had financial problems, did not benefit from Mom. He did it clearly for his pleasure.” Drugs were hidden – in the garage, in his shoes, in a sports sock. Had he shown any regrets after his confession? “No. Your father just thanked me for ridding him of a burden,” the police officer replied. The photos revealed the extent of the horror. Caroline’s father apparently had a double life, consumed Viagra, took HIV tests and writes that he sometimes banned those who called on his wife to rape her to wear a condom. In a photo Caroline’s mother appears naked, face down, with a man behind her. “The other photos are all similar – only they have different men,” he relates. As Caroline and her brothers left the police station, she addressed the responsible police officer. “Tell my father I will never forgive him and that he ruined our lives”. “I learned I was his second victim” but there was also continuity. Shortly after leaving the police station, she was called back. The police had to check with her two photos. They pictured a young woman sleeping with her left side wearing beige underwear in bed. Only when the police indicated a birthmark, Caroline was able to identify herself. His daughter and son Dominique Pelicot in the trial that has shocked France “I usually sleep lightly. So I was drugged too.” Turns out the second photo was taken in her own house. “I was his second victim”. That night in November 2020, the three brothers had to return home with their mother. “Returning home, with its smell, was unbearable”. Her father’s office saw the empty space where he had his now confiscated computer. By the end of the week, her mother had gone to live with one of her brothers and Caroline, who suffered a nervous breakdown and needed some psychiatric care. According to her book, the last time her mother had been raped was just two weeks ago, October 22nd. Returning home, knowing that the details of the case had already leaked, she was forced to try to explain the miserable situation to her younger son as best she could. The family started to fall apart. A victim without consciousness, without any memory of abuse, Caroline’s mother, recounts the book, was instinctively found to sympathize with her husband. “He’s not happy where he is, you know. She suffers,” she told her surprised daughter. This left Caroline in despair: “Because of my father, now I lose my mother…”. From prison, says Caroline, her father managed to send a letter to her mother. “I know I am here because of what I did to the love of my life, to my family, to my friends,” he wrote. Caroline describes it as the letter of a manipulative man. “I’m not surprised. He tries to divide us.” As the family lawyer began receiving evidence in the months that followed, alleged details of how her father boasted online about the power of drugs began to be revealed. “Last time I didn’t do enough – this time, no problem, we can make it.” His approach was, according to his daughter, always the same: first approached potential users in a chatroom, then asked them if, like he followed the “rape method” before posting photos of his wife on a private forum called “without her knowing it”. “He dressed her like a cheap whore” “He dressed her like a cheap whore”, noted his frightened daughter. He didn’t have to go far to find willing participants. Most of those who responded stayed close. He had even drawn a map of how to get home, photographed him and sent him to those he had chosen, guiding them, through messages. In order for neighbors not to suspect, cars had to be parked in a nearby gym. He had designed every possible detail No one could wear perfume or smell smoke, so that he would leave no trace of his presence. Cell phones had to stay in cars to avoid the risk of hitting and waking the victim. They even had to wash their hands in hot water so as not to shock his wife who was sleeping with their cold fingers. After undressing in the kitchen, his associates received advice to keep their clothes close in case they had to leave in a hurry. The defendants in the trial were aged from 21 to 68 at the time of alleged rape. Among these are a firefighter, a truck driver, a city councilman, a bank clerk, a prison guard, a nurse, and a journalist. When asked if his daughter sexually attracted him, he replied no. “He’s not my type. She’s much younger than I’m used to.” And he stressed that “I never touched my daughter.” As the months passed and the current trial approached, Caroline tried to rationalize what had happened to her family and how each member faced it. “My mother is optimistic, funny and dynamic,” she notes. And strong. “Even the day she learned that one of her rapists had HIV, she did not collapse”. A subsequent HIV test proved negative. In September 2022 he created a group to raise awareness about drug use in rape and sexual violence. Since then she struggled to escape her father’s shadow. “As we approach the date of the trial, when I can sleep, I dream of him,” he writes. “In vain I tried to understand the true identity of the man who raised me. My father is a criminal and I must learn to live with this reality, to accept that I am divided by the needs of justice, truth and love that I once felt for him. I fear I will never be able to hate him.” During the trial the girl collapsed in court, exited the courtroom but returned 20 minutes later…