The trial of Dominique Pelicot, a man who orchestrated a nine-year campaign of abuse by drugging his wife and then inviting dozens of men to rape her, has shocked and fascinated France since it began on Monday.
The court has heard over the past two days how Mr Pelicot, 71, sent a barrage of perverted messages to willing participants in a sordid chatroom. To those who accepted the invitation to abuse his wife, he said: ‘You are just like me – you like rape mode.’
The court has also seen 50 men promoted to the dock, all standing trial alongside the deranged mastermind behind the rape.
But Mr. Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, has already given an extensive and detailed account of her father’s cruelty.
In her book, And I Stopped Calling You Papa, Darian—a pseudonym—describes in 176 pages how her father cruelly manipulated, abused, and destroyed his wife Gisele’s physical and mental health before his dark deeds were finally discovered in November 2020.
She describes how her father “dressed Maman like a prostitute” and forbade many of the men he invited to the family to use condoms while they abused her unconscious mother – including one who tested positive for HIV.
And she explained how she was confronted with the reality that she too had been drugged, dressed in underwear and left in the fetal position by her own father while he took pictures with a camera.
Darian left the courtroom in tears on Tuesday after the footage was discussed during the trial.
Mr. Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, has already given a lengthy account of her father’s awfulness in chilling detail
Gisele Pelicot, 72, arrives at the court in Avignon, France on the morning of September 4
Dominique Pelicot is accused of recruiting men online to repeatedly attack his wife for more than a decade, until his arrest in 2020.
Darian’s book, published in 2022, about a year and a half after her father’s crimes came to light, chronicles the demise of the Pelicot family as Gisele’s health inexplicably deteriorated.
Although some names were changed when the book was published, Darian gives a gruesome account of how her father manipulated her mother and prescribed her powerful tranquilizers.
Darian’s book, released in 2022, about a year and a half after her father’s crimes came to light, chronicles the destruction of the Pelicot family as Gisele’s health inexplicably deteriorated
Excerpts from her work have already been quoted by the judge in the Avignon courtroom this week.
Darian writes about an incident in the summer of 2018, telling how her brother went to his parents’ house for dinner and saw his mother almost falling asleep at the dinner table.
“Just a few minutes after Maman sat down, she was already fidgeting in her chair, as if she was drunk,” Darian quotes him as saying.
‘Suddenly her whole body was empty, like a rag doll.’
“That happens. It’s better if I take her to bed with me,” his father is said to have said, feigning the role of a concerned husband acting in his wife’s best interests.
“In reality, the cocktail of drugs she had poured into her glass of rosé was starting to take effect,” Darian said.
She further writes that Mr Pelicot dared to suggest that his wife was having an affair when she complained of serious gynecological problems and tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease.
Darian claimed that when Gisele told her husband she needed treatment for the unexplained illness, he asked her, “So what are you doing with your day?” and accused her of hanging around while he was playing boules or cycling at the foot of Mont Ventoux.
She also explained that despite inviting 72 men to live in Gisele’s home, her father never asked for money or tried to profit from the barbaric plan.
‘Ultimate perversity… Father, who always had money problems, did not profit from Maman. He did it purely for his pleasure.’
Police found a file on Pelicot’s computer called ‘My Daughter Naked’. Pictured: Caroline Darian (left) in the courthouse during her father’s trial
Gisele Pelicot arrives at court Monday during the trial of her husband Dominique, who is accused of drugging her for nearly a decade and inviting 50 strangers to rape her at their home in the south of France.
Dominique Pelicot is accused of orchestrating the rape ring
Pelicot was first arrested in September 2020 for taking pictures up the skirts of female supermarket customers.
But it was only when police searched the nursing home he and Mrs. Pelicot shared in the beautiful Provencal village of Mazan that they learned the dark truth.
Investigators discovered more than 20,000 images and videos showing Gisele being raped by 72 men, 51 of whom, including Mr. Pelicot, were identified by prosecutors.
Her husband played the role of director and provided his films with tags such as ‘Her Rapists’, ‘Abuse’ and ‘My Slut’.
To make sure Gisele was unconscious and had not consented to sex, as many of the arrested attackers claimed, investigators had to confront her with the disgusting videos.
Darian explains in her book how her mother broke the news to the family.
“Your father is going to prison,” Gisele said bluntly during a phone call.
“Caro, it’s true… I had to look at some pictures at the police station. I thought my heart would stop beating,” Darian quoted her mother as saying.
When Darian and her brothers went to the police station to speak with detectives, they were confronted with the horrific reality of how their father had treated Gisele.
She explained that they looked at a series of photographs, all taken by Mr. Pelicot, of their mother lying on her stomach, often in the fetal position, while a series of strange men raped her from behind.
When she asked one of the police officers if her father had shown any remorse after his arrest and subsequent confession, the officer reportedly said, “No. Your father was just thanking me for relieving him of a burden.”
“Tell my father I will never forgive him and that he ruined our lives,” Darian said as she left the station.
Some of the 50 co-defendants accused of rape speak to a lawyer at the courthouse in the case that shocked France on Monday
The town of Mazan, 32 kilometres from Avignon in southern France, where the victim and her husband lived and the attacks took place
The discovery of her father’s horrific crimes tore the Pelicot family apart and irrevocably changed the lives of every family member, Darian said.
In her book and in several interviews with French media, she describes the ordeal as a “family catastrophe,” “an earthquake,” and “an explosion,” adding that her once “boring but successful” life has been completely blown apart.
“(I had) a husband, a son, a home and a job I loved… You never know what boring is until you lose it,” she wrote, adding that she suffered a mental breakdown and was briefly admitted to a psychiatric ward in the days after her father’s actions came to light.
Later she had to explain the scenario to her young child, who had spent many happy days playing with his grandfather in the Pelicots’ lush green garden and family pool.
In addition to his work as an author, Darian founded an association called ‘Don’t Put Me To Sleep’, which aims to raise awareness of drug-related crimes, including rape.
She also wrote that she has long been “plagued by the fear” that her father might have invited men to rape her too, adding: “I am convinced I was drugged, but he will never admit it.”
Her father has admitted to manipulating and abusing his wife, but denies abusing Darian.
“I never touched my daughter,” he told prosecutors.
The shocking trial, which began on Monday, is expected to end on December 20, with 51 people, including Mr Pelicot, charged with aggravated rape.
