Caroline Darian screamed “you’ll die like a dog” to her father as his sick crimes were exposed in court, and now she’s spoken out for the first time since he was jailed.
Her life changed forever with a devastating phone call from her mother Gisele Pelicot, who had just discovered her husband had been drugging and raping her for over a decade.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, invited dozens of strangers into their home to sexually abuse Gisele as she lay unconscious. The mum, 72, was sedated and raped at least 200 times between 2011 and 2020 by more than 50 men, including soldiers, nurses and truck drivers, who have now been convicted of aggravated rape or sexual assault.
Last month, following a landmark trial in France, Pelicot was found guilty of drugging and raping his unwitting wife and will now likely die behind bars.
The couple’s three children bravely supported their mother throughout the trial, and now Caroline, 45, has spoken about the family’s hidden horrors – and the discoveries she made about her own abuse.
‘Nightmare’ phone call
In a new BBC interview titled ‘Pelicot Trial: The Daughter’s Story’, Caroline recalls the exact moment she discovered her father’s horrendous crimes. She told presenter Emma Barnett that on one evening in November 2020, her mother called her out of the blue.
Initially, she thought Gisele was going to tell her that her father was dead, as it was during the Covid pandemic, and she suspected he might have fallen sick.
But instead, distraught Gisele explained that Pelicot had been drugging her for 10 years, inviting strangers into their family home to rape her while she was unconscious.
Gisele had no idea of the horror that was inflicted on her. Her husband’s crimes were only uncovered when he was caught upskirting a woman in a local supermarket, as police then discovered thousands of photos of Giselle being abused on a Pelicot’s laptop. The cops then showed Gisele the images and the sickening plot unravelled.
Recalling the “nightmare” phone call, Caroline said: “It was like an earthquake or like a tsunami in my own living room. I was so close to my father. You can’t imagine how it hurts, it was a nightmare… I remember that I shouted, I cried and I even insulted him. It was one of the worst moments in my life.”
Sick underwear riddle
Pelicot sickeningly documented his crimes by recording footage of Gisele being sexually abused on a USB drive, naming the folder ‘Abuses’. And among the videos of Gisele’s abuse was another sinister secret, as police found indecent photographs of Caroline, asleep and partially clothed.
Alongside the rape of his wife Gisele, Dominique Pelicot was found guilty of taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine. Of the moment the police showed her the photos of herself, Caroline said: “I was shown two pictures of me, totally unconscious, with pants which are not mine. I was in shock.”
The woman says she did not recognise herself until the police pointed out a birthmark on her cheek. “He told me, ‘It’s you in those pictures, Madam’,” Caroline said. Describing the images, the mum said she was wearing “a top and pants, and that’s it, and I was laying on my left side like my mother, in all of her videos and pictures”.
Traumatic realisation
The court heard about the photographs of Caroline, which were hauntingly saved under the name ‘around my daughter, naked’, during the trial. Caroline’s older brother, David, 50, confronted his father in the courtroom and told him: “If you have any little bit of humanity left, tell the truth about what you did to my sister, who is still suffering every day and will suffer all her life”.
Pelicot shouted back that he had never abused his children and asked for forgiveness from his eldest son, to which David replied: “Never”. During the trial, Pelicot always strongly denied abusing Caroline, but she told the BBC that she is “convinced” that her father secretly raped her. She told the programme: “I know that he drugged me, probably for abuse, for sexual abuse, but I don’t have any evidence.”
“He has always denied it, but much more than that, he communicated different versions. He told different versions each time. So he lied,” Caroline claimed. She added: “He is a sexual pervert. I don’t believe him. He is always lying.” Caroline said she has discussed her gut feeling with her mother, but Gisele has found it difficult to “integrate” the information with her own harrowing ordeal.
Childhood robbed
Caroline told Emma that she no longer looks back on her childhood experiences with her father fondly, and cannot remember them at all. She said: “When I look back, I don’t really remember the father that I thought he was. I look straight to the sexual criminal he is.” She explained that now, she views Pelicot as a stranger, and it is as though part of her life “doesn’t exist” anymore.
Describing her father, Caroline claims Pelicot was “always a sexual pervert”. She said: “There’s no way you can wake up one morning and say, ‘OK, I’m going to drug my wife and rape her’. It doesn’t make any sense. There [are] two Dominiques co-existing in him.” She added: “He should die in prison. He is a dangerous man… There’s no way he can get out. No way.”
Family devastation
Caroline has become a vocal advocate for victims of sexual violence, and is passionate about raising awareness of the ‘invisible’ survivors, who may not have substantial evidence of their abuse. She explained to Emma that while her mother is seen as a courageous hero, “a lot of victims are not believed because there is no evidence”.
Caroline strongly believes that society needs to be better educated on sexual abuse, including children. Telling Emma what her 10-year-old son knows of her family’s ordeal, she said: “We told him the entire truth. He loved his grandfather. But we didn’t want to lie. So we found the right words to explain to a six-year-old child that he will never see him again.”
If you are affected by the issues raised in this article, contact SARSAS on info@sarsas.org.uk or reach out for NHS advice on help after rape or sexual assault.
