The actions of vile rapist Dominique Pélicot have shattered the lives of his wife and primary victim Gisèle, and their three children David, Caroline and Florian
Dominique Pélicot has been jailed for 20 years in the mass rape trial that has sent shockwaves around the globe.
His wife Gisèle Pélicot was the principal victim in her ex-husband’s sick enterprise, which saw her raped 92 times by strangers he invited into their bedroom between 2011 and 2020. The mother-of-three was sedated heavily so she wouldn’t wake up, with evil Pélicot demanding his fellow abusers warm their hands and not smoke or wear perfume so their disturbing crimes wouldn’t be detected.
The 72-year-old grandfather had escalated from drugging and raping his unsuspecting wife himself at their family home in France. A total of 51 men were sentenced today for their depraved actions towards Gisèle, 72, who bravely waived her anonymity in a bid to help other victims of sexual abuse.
The couple’s daughter, Caroline Darian, 45, was also a victim of her father, who took indecent images of her and his two daughters-in-law.
The family of five grew up in a big home 70 miles from Marseille. By 2010, children David, Caroline and Florian had flown the nest but visited regularly, with the couple planning an idyllic retirement in Mazan, a small village in Provence.
But by 2011, the trio were becoming increasingly concerned about their mother, who was suffering from ill health – constantly feeling tired, shedding weight, and even losing clumps of her hair. They had no idea their father was heavily sedating Gisèle so he and others could rape her but looking back, there were some suspicious moments.
One such instance occurred when Florian, 38, was having a late summer dinner at his parents. “I saw my mother switch off, I felt she was no longer with us – she was completely groggy, staring ahead,” he told the court in Avignon. “I said: ‘Mum are you OK? Dad, is there a problem?’
“He got up fast and said: ‘I’ll put her to bed’. We went home. But imagine if I had forgotten something and gone back to the house, what I would have found? He had planned to do to her what we now know he did.”
Pélicot would routinely dismiss his children’s fears their mother might be suffering from a brain tumour or Alzheimer’s, putting her symptoms down to stress. When the truth came out and photos of his daughter Caroline in her underwear were discovered in her father’s possession, she believed she too had been sedated by her father.
“I know I was sedated,” she told the court. “It’s not a supposition, it’s a reality. I know it.”
The rapist denied doing so in court, when Caroline’s elder brother David pleaded: “If you have any little bit of humanity left, tell the truth on what you did to my sister, who is still suffering every day and will suffer all her life.”
The sales manager from outside Paris said his family’s lives had been destroyed when he found out his father had orchestrated a mass rape plot against his mother. He repeatedly threw up when he learned the truth and joined his siblings in emptying the family home, with the relatives finding even the scent of Pélicot’s presence unbearable.
David had been so worried about his mother’s health, he thought he would lose her. Sick Pelicot had also photographed his sons’ wives naked without their knowledge, using hidden cameras in bathrooms and other rooms.
David’s wife had been photographed when she was pregnant. He said to his father in court: “When I discovered that my wife, when pregnant with twins, was photographed – and I don’t know how many photographs – I want to ask: ‘How could you do such a thing?’ I keep asking myself why, what was the aim? I can’t answer that question. But what I understand is that man went up the scale of fantasies with a violence that he always had in him.”
Florian was similarly affected by his father’s crimes, calling him the ‘devil in person’ as he said: “Learning that my father is one of the biggest criminals of the last 20 years – how do you rebuild from that?”
According to the Telegraph, Caroline wrote in her memoir And I Stopped Calling You Daddy that she had asked the police if he had shown any remorse when his sick crimes were revealed. The answer was no. “Your father simply thanked me for relieving him of a burden,” the officer told her and she sent the following message in return: “Tell my father I’ll never forgive him and he’s ruined our lives.”
After they emptied the family home soon after Pelicot’s crimes were discovered, Gisele moved in with one of her sons and Caroline suffered a breakdown and was briefly confined to psychiatric care. With details of the shocking case emerging, she was forced to explain what had happened to her young son.
In her memoir, according to the Telegraph, Pelicot’s daughter tells how he managed to get a letter to her mother from prison, which said: “I know I’m here because of what I’ve done to the love of my life, to my family, my friends.” She wrote of ‘losing her mother’ when Gisele told her: ‘He’s not happy where he is, you know. He’s suffering’, saying her father was trying to divide them.
The survivor has since set up a campaign group to raise awareness of the use of drugs in rape and sexual violence. David has told how the trio and their mother no longer have any family photos because they ‘got rid of everything linked to my father there and then’.
Gisèle went by ‘Pelicot’ during the trial so her grandchildren could be ‘proud’ of being related to her but she has now reverted to her maiden name.
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.
