When your father is the monster

Caroline Darian is the daughter of Gisèle Pelicot. The family’s lives were completely changed one day in 2020 when her father Dominique was arrested for trying to film up women’s skirts in a supermarket. A security guard convinced three brave women to file charges — and if it was not for them, Dominique’s terrifying double life would not have been exposed.

On confiscating his phone, the police found disturbing photos of his 72-year-old wife, who was drugged and raped by numerous men over a number of years. They then started their investigation.

What follows in Caroline’s book is the next 13 months of complete horror and betrayal.

Her mother and father had retired to the sleepy village of Mazan in Provence, France. During this period, her mother was the victim of mass rape over the course of 10 years. However, the rapes could have happened over a longer period as it seems the abuse started when they lived in Paris, long before they retired. 

But what the police investigation originally uncovered was more than 20,000 images and videos of an unconscious and drugged Gisèle being sexually assaulted by 72 different men. Caroline writes of when they first heard the news from the lieutenant in charge of the case: “The first images the enquiry dug out from my father’s digital hoard date from September 2013. The number of men who have abused my mother is impossible to believe.”

The police told her: “The current count is 73. Right now, we’ve managed to identify 50 or so. The youngest is 22, the oldest 71. They range across all classes and professions — students, pensioners, even a journalist. Your father organised the whole thing, taking photos and filming everything that took place. I have to tell you, the images are hard to stomach, even for us. And there’s still a lot we haven’t gone through yet.”

This was just the beginning. Caroline was later shown by the police photos of herself, taken when she was younger — asleep, unaware and posed in a certain position wearing underwear that was not her own. She writes: “How did he manage to take my photo in the middle of night without waking me up? Where did the underwear come from, as I’m sure it’s not mine? Did he drug me? Go beyond the photos? Did he — I can’t keep the unthinkable at bay — abuse me?”

Caroline becomes convinced her father had drugged and raped her too, a crime he still denies. Unable to cope, Caroline finds herself in a psychiatric ward, where she was given treatment, but the idea of being drugged and sedated was intolerable.

She decides to keep a diary as part of her therapy.

What the diary becomes is a way for her to make sense of her family unfolding. It shows how she struggles to accept that her memories of her life are now absolutely tainted. How herself and her mother are victims, and her homes are now places of terrible crimes. How her mother becomes a stoic victim. How her brothers David and Florian are trying to come to terms with a father who is a monster. How her husband Paul is trying to keep the family together and how her six-year-old son Tom is trying to understand what happened to Grandma and why he can’t talk to Grandpa about soccer. How her sisters-in-law were both photographed naked, without their knowledge, at different times over the past 10 years. Dominique installed automatic cameras in their bedrooms and bathrooms — in their house and in his — creating montages of them for his website.

Caroline writes: “Who is this man who’s been hiding inside my father for so long? I once had a father who looked out for me, took care of me. Where’s he gone? Where’s the man who walked me to school, encouraged me on the sports field, pushed me to study, helped me with my projects, talked me through my career choices? Where’s the man who watched over and played with his grandchildren, basking in their love? How can you lead such a double life? How can you pull the wool over so many eyes for so many years?”

His horrific acts and betrayals seem to be never-ending. There are other rapes of other women, other instances of filming Caroline and using her and her brother’s homes as places to conduct more sexual crimes.

In December last year, a French court found Dominique Pelicot guilty (he faces a 20-year sentence), along with 50 co-defendants, who have sentences of between three and 15 years in jail.

The fight continues for Caroline, who, through her charity over the past three years, has highlighted chemical submission as a social and public health issue. Her book, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again is her powerful clarion call.