Caroline Darian, the daughter of brave Gisele Pelicot, who put her husband behind bars after he invited more than 50 men to rape her while unconscious, says she is ‘certain’ her father also raped her
Gisele Pelicot’s daughter is “convinced” her sick father is “lying” about what really happened to her in their family home.
Caroline Darian, the daughter of brave rape survivor Gisele Pelicot, has spoken out for the first time since her father, Dominique Pelicot, was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for sedating and raping his wife, 72, and inviting dozens of strangers to sexually abuse her. The former electrician, 71, was sent to jail last month and will likely die behind bars following a landmark trial in France.
During the trial, the court heard that Pelicot had 3,800 photos and videos of his wife being sexually abused saved on a USB drive, called ‘abuses’. Chillingly, there were also images of his daughter, Caroline, 45, which were saved as ‘around my daughter, naked’.
As well as being sentenced for drugging and raping his wife, Pelicot was also found guilty of taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine.
In the courtroom, Caroline’s older brother David, 50, confronted his father about the disturbing pictures. He said: “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”.
Pelicot vehermently denies abusing his daughter, but Caroline says she is “certain” that he did rape her, but she does not have the evidence to prove it. Speaking to presenter Emma Barnett on BBC Two’s Pelicot Trial: The Daughter’s Story, which airs tonight at 7pm, Caroline recalls the moment she first saw the photos of herself at the police station. She explains: “I was shown two pictures of me, totally unconscious, with pants which are not mine. I was in shock.”
The mum says she struggled to 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”.
When asked by Emma what she thinks her father did to her, Caroline said: “I know that he drugged me, probably for abuse, for sexual abuse, but I don’t have any evidence.”
She added: “I’m conviced that he raped me, yes. He is a sexual pervert. I don’t believe him. He is always lying.” Caroline says she has discussed her gut feeling with her mother, but Gisele has found it difficult to “integrate” the information with her own harrowing ordeal. Caroline explained: “She was raped more than 200 times by different people, so for Mum, I think it’s difficult to have to integrate all of that in one go.”
In December 2024, Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of drugging and raping his wife while allowing scores of others to do so. The rapist admitted how, for years, he drugged Gisele so he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults. All 51 men – aged between 26 and 73 – have been jailed for a total of 400 years.
They were found guilty of charges including aggravated rape, sexual assault and possessing indecent images of children. Pelicot sedated his wife by putting tablets of a powerful anxiolytic drug into her evening dinner. He then invited men from an online forum into the couple’s bedroom at their family home in Mazan, a commune in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France.
If you are affected by the issues raised in this article, contact SARSAS on [email protected] or reach out for NHS advice on help after rape or sexual assault.
- Pelicot Trial: The Daughter’s Story airs on BBC Two at 7pm tonight.