Caroline Darian, the daughter of Gis\u00e8le Pelicot who sustained years of horrific sexual abuse by her then-husband and other men, has described how she\u2019s certain her father drugged her and strongly suspects she was raped too. <\/p>\n
In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, Darian, aged 46, described the mental \u201cburden\u201d of being the daughter of both victim and perpetrator, as she expressed her strong desire for her father to die in prison. <\/p>\n
A horrifying, monthslong mass rape and drugging trial that shook France to its core concluded last month, with 51 guilty verdicts. Dominique Pelicot and 49 others were found guilty of the rape or sexual assault of his former wife, while one of those on trial was convicted of the attempted and aggravated rape of his own wife, rather than Gis\u00e8le, having copied Pelicot\u2019s methods. <\/p>\n
The trial \u2013 which has pushed the country to examine a culture struggling with pervasive misogyny and systemic sexual assault \u2013 has galvanized women to demand changes in the way it approaches gender-based violence. <\/p>\n
Darian described receiving a fateful phone call from her mother, one evening in November 2020, in which Gis\u00e8le informed her that her father, now 72, had been drugging Gis\u00e8le for around 10 years in order to facilitate her rape by different men. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt that moment, I lost what was a normal life,\u201d Darian told the broadcaster. <\/p>\n
Darian spoke of how she strongly suspects that she was also a victim of sexual abuse orchestrated by her father. Days after the phone call, Darian herself was called by police and shown images found on Dominique\u2019s laptop of herself lying unconscious on a bed wearing only a T-shirt and underwear \u2013 images she didn\u2019t immediately recognize herself in. <\/p>\n
She told the BBC she knows her father drugged her, and surmises she was raped too. \u201cBut I don\u2019t have any evidence,\u201d she laments. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s the case for how many victims? They are not believed because there\u2019s no evidence. They\u2019re not listened to, not supported.\u201d <\/p>\n
In court, Dominique maintained he had not abused his daughter. Earlier that day, Darian screamed at him: \u201cI\u2019ll never see you again! You\u2019ll die alone like a dog!,\u201d according to media reports. <\/p>\n
Now, she describes her father as \u201cone of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 or 30 years\u201d and has written a book detailing her family\u2019s trauma, titled \u201cI\u2019ll Never Call Him Dad Again.\u201d <\/p>\n
She described the reality she is faced with as a \u201cterrible burden\u201d and can now only view Dominique as the \u201csexual criminal he is.\u201d <\/p>\n
The book also explores the concept of \u201cchemical submission\u201d \u2013 the use of drugs to facilitate criminal action against a person, including sexual abuse. It was the method Dominique used to orchestrate his wife\u2019s abuse, offering her unconscious body to strangers online. <\/p>\n
In December, Dominique received the maximum sentence of 20 years for aggravated rape. Forty-eight other men on trial were found guilty of aggravated rape, with two guilty of sexual assault. <\/p>\n
Evidence shows how Dominique recruited the men to rape his then-wife on the now-defunct Coco.fr \u201cdating site\u201d for years, using the chatroom called \u201cwithout her knowledge,\u201d where he would exchange pictures of an unconscious Gis\u00e8le before moving to Skype and text messages to arrange the meeting with his accomplices. <\/p>\n
Gis\u00e8le testified that she was completely unaware of her husband\u2019s actions. Over time, the frequent sedation and sexual abuse began to take a physical toll. Her husband accompanied her on several doctor\u2019s visits during which she complained about memory loss and pelvic pain, according to court documents. <\/p>\n
It was only after Dominique was arrested in a local supermarket in September 2020 for filming up the skirts of female customers, for which he was convicted, that his web of crimes came to light. Pelicot received an eight-month suspended prison sentence for this offense. <\/p>\n
Whilst investigating the upskirting, police officers confiscated his hard drive, laptop and phones and found hundreds of images and videos of Gis\u00e8le being raped, opening one of the worst sex offense cases in modern French history. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Caroline Darian, the daughter of Gis\u00e8le Pelicot who sustained years of horrific sexual abuse by her then-husband and other men, has described how she\u2019s certain her father drugged her and strongly suspects she was raped…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}