Caroline Darian, Dominique Pelicot's daughter, tells how she survived

At 8:40 p.m. on November 2, 2020, Caroline Darian was a mother who fortunately worked by 42 years, close to her parents and two brothers, David and Florian, is satisfied with a life so ordinary that she would later characterize him as “banal”.

Then, a minute later, she became someone very different. The phone rang and his life was divided in two.

From this moment, Darian's personal calendar would exist on two opposite planes: the years before knowing that for more than a decade, his father, Dominique Pelicot, had systematically drugged, raped and allowed more than 70 men to rape her mother, Gisèle Pelicot, and the days, the weeks and months that followed.

Days, weeks and months that Darian tells with a precision and powerful details in “I will never call him dad again: transform our family trauma of sexual assault and chemical submission into a collective fight“, Published in the United States in March. (Caroline Darian is a pen name for Caroline Peyronnet.)

“Later, I learned that those who undergo sudden trauma can often recall only one isolated detail – a smell, a noise, a particular sensation; Something infinitely small, which develops to occupy all the available space, ”writes Darian. “For me, it's the clock on the cook. Twenty-five minutes after the eight, engraved in brutal white. ”

In 2020, Dominique Pelicot was arrested for “Upskirting” – trying to take photos under the skirts of three women. During the later research on his phone and computer, the police found a huge cover of photos and videos of Dominique and men whom he asked on the Internet violating a drugged gisèle.

Last year, the world watched the Pelicot trial With a mixture of horror and fear – horror to the enormity of the crime, which led to the condemnation of 51 men, including Dominique, and AWE inspired by Gisèle's courage. The little woman with the Red Bob has become a feminist icon for her decision to give up her right to anonymity and allow the trial to be made public in order to change the shame that often surrounds rape, from victims to the authors.

But Gisèle was not the only victim that “I will never call him dad” clearly. The international bestseller, published in France in 2022, is taken from Darian reviews on the living nightmare who followed the arrest of Dominique.

Day after day, Darian and his brothers tried to take care of their mother when they clashed with a cascade of evidence that the father and the love that they thought were knowing were, in reality, a cold, accomplice and manipulator monster.

The various concerns they had after Dominique and Gisèle moved from Paris to Mazan, a small town in the south of France, now filled them with guilt. Darian and other family members were sufficiently worried about her mother's episodes of fatigue in mind, episodes of memory loss and other physical symptoms to take her to various doctors. But, having no reason to demand a toxicology report and with their father who attributes the symptoms to the tendency of Gisèle to “exaggerate”, they were forced to accept waves associated with aging.

After the shocking revelations, their mother's memories fell asleep at the dinner table, being unable to remember past conversations and, in a case, to benefit from vaginal bleeding, took a new and scary meaning.

Then, still in shock from the crimes committed against his mother, Darian was called back to the Mazan police station to show two photos of herself, asleep in an unusual position, her buttocks exposed to revealing pants that were not hers. Photos of which she had absolutely no memory.

Faced with these images and the possibility that it was also drugged and raped, Darian experienced a mental break and requires hospitalization. The passages recounting its broken emotional state and its understandable fear of the sedatives that have been administered to calm it are terrifying in their beaten simplicity and their target.

It was after this break, said Darian, that she became determined to write an almost journalist report of her experience.

“I started writing two weeks after my release from a psychiatric hospital,” she says on Zoom de France. “It was a real deep need – I work in communications and this book has become a means of survival. First, put the words, then share like a form of therapy. ”

Caroline Darian says that she is proud of her mother's decision to make the trial public. “I told her from the start that it couldn't be closed,” she said. “I told him it would be a gift for one person.”

(Arnold Jerocki / Getty Images)

She wanted to tell her story as well as she could so that people could understand how a crime like this could be committed, and the generalized damage he had caused. “It is not only the family of the Pelicot that was destroyed,” she says. “All the other rapists also had families, families who had no idea what they were doing.”

While working on her own anger, shock and sorrow, Darian realized that ignorance of the company of the widespread use of drugs in sexual abuse was one of the reasons why Dominique had been able to get away for so long.

“I had heard of GHB, the dating rape drug, but I didn't know how widespread it had become,” she wrote. “Nor did I know that the rapists were turning more and more towards sleeping pills and anti-annual medicine … My ignorance seems almost guilty.”

With the French publication of “I never call him dad” in 2022, Darian began a campaign to raise awareness of the role that drugs play in rape and sexual abuse. “I have received so many testimonies from other women but also adolescents because of incest, when drugs are often used.”

With the #Mendorspas movement (don't put me under), Darian hopes to help create a medical protocol and the application of the law to investigate the potential cases of chemical submission.

“The (general practitioners) that my mother saw, neurologists, they could not help,” she said. “They could not properly analyze his symptoms because there were no trends available. We thought she had brain cancer. We thought she had Alzheimer's disease. “

Once the truth is discovered, the small Mazan police forces have not been equipped to deal with the nature of the crimes or the emotional impact on the victims. “We were given this information, shown these images, then we left alone,” she said. “We were offered no support, we were totally alone.”

Most of the evidence that the police found involved Dominique's abuse about Gisèle, but Darian stresses that there were also photos of her and her two sisters -in -law – “no woman in our family was spared” – as well as links with cold rapes.

Last month, Darian filed new accusations against his father, who is also be inquiry As part of several cold cases. Dominique denied having touched his daughter. “The initial investigation lasted two and a half years, but the south of France is a very small place. They were overwhelmed. This is why the investigation focused on Gisèle.”

A second book, recently published in France, is Darian's story on the trial, during which she openly challenged her father's denial to harm her, and her work fighting chemical submission. She worked with a politician in a government report that she hopes to offer concrete solutions.

“I knew I had to make it useful,” she said. “I am a mom, I have a job, but I want to add my own experience to help identify the victims in France and in the world. I am an activist and I knew that if I had to go through that, it is not by chance. I have the strength to wear it. “

Speaking of his experiences, including the beginnings where his life has separated, has not become easier over time – during a 45 -minute interview, Darian's voice chokes with emotion at more than one opportunity, in particular speaking of his mother. In “I will never call him daddy again”, Darian discusses the refusal of Gisèle, the same as to consider that Dominique would abuse Darian and the corner which led between her and her mother.

Darian is proud of his mother's decision to make the trial public. “I told her from the start that it couldn't be closed,” she said. “I told him it would be a gift for one person.” Gisèle also works on a brief, “A Hymn to Life”, which should be published at the beginning of next year, but the mother and the daughter have limited communication.

“We are each on a different path,” explains Darian. “It's too heavy; She needs to recover. She must rebuild – she is almost 73 years old – and I am on another trip. Dominique was judged for her and that's true. The way she takes care of this belongs to her, but it's too painful for me. But we are no longer a family. ”

“Dominique has succeeded,” she adds sadly. “He divided our family in two.”