Last month, Dominique Pelicot, the French man accused of repeatedly raping his then-wife while she was unconscious and inviting over a reported 80 men to take part between 2011 and 2020, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The historic case—laid bare in a three-and-a-half-month trial—horrified France and sent shockwaves across the world. The woman at the center of the case, Gisèle Pelicot, Dominique’s ex-wife and mother of his three children, attended the proceedings every day and stood “emotionless” as he was read his verdict. Now, Pelicot’s daughter is detailing disturbing allegations of her own.
On Monday, Caroline Darian
spoke to the BBC about learning the full extent of her father’s crimes including the shocking discovery that she is likely among his victims.”I know that he drugged me, probably for sexual abuse,” Darian said. “But I don’t have any evidence.”
Pelicot was first apprehended when he was arrested for taking photos up women’s skirts at a supermarket in southeastern France in 2020. That November, while French authorities were investigating Pelicot, they found a folder entitled “abuses” on his computer that contained thousands of photos and videos of him and other men—complete strangers—sexually assaulting his Gisele while she was unconscious. In total, police counted 20,000 images. Prior to the investigation, Gisèle had no idea. For nine years, Pelicot was regularly drugging his wife with a number of medications, including Temesta, an anti-anxiety drug that can take effect like a sedative.
Also on the computer were two photos in a deleted folder entitled: “my daughter naked.” The photos showed a half-clothed Darian—then in her thirties—asleep on a bed. When authorities showed her the photos, she said she couldn’t process that the woman in the photos was her. Not only were the photos taken at different times she couldn’t recall, but the lights were on, and she didn’t recognize the underwear she was wearing.
“I lived a dissociation effect. I had difficulties recognizing myself from the start,” she told the BBC. “Then the police officer said: ‘Look, you have the same brown mark on your cheek… it’s you.’ I looked at those two photos differently then…I was laying on my left side like my mother, in all her pictures.”
In court, she testified that she was certain she was drugged and likely raped and abused as her mother had been.
“It’s not a hypothesis; it’s reality, I know it,” she reportedly told the court. Unlike her mother’s case where several photos and videos saved to Pelicot’s computer showed Gisèle being raped, there is no proof of what Pelicot may have done to his own daughter while she was unconscious.
“And that’s the case for how many victims?” Darian asked hypothetically. “They are not believed because there’s no evidence. They’re not listened to, not supported.” Frankly, I don’t know what’s more torturous: Discovering you were repeatedly raped via a trove of documentation. Or, being given enough clues to deduce that something terrible had happened, but never learning the full extent.
“I’m a forgotten victim in this case,” Darian reportedly said at her final appearance during the trial. Addressing her father, she added: “I know you abused me. You don’t have the courage to tell me.” Despite the folder’s title and the two photos, Pelicot testified that he had never touched his daughter and that he didn’t know who was behind the camera. Further investigation, according to the Guardian, revealed that Pelicot had hidden cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms at his home and in relatives’ homes to secretly film his sons’ wives naked. He then would disseminate the footage online, writing that he was “surrounded by sluts.” He was also discovered to have hidden cameras in a guest bedroom in his home to secretly film Darian naked. In “photomontages” Pelicot would compare her and Gisèle naked, captioning them: “The slut’s daughter,” which he also posted online.
“He is a dangerous man,” Darian said of her father. “There is no way he can get out. No way.”
“When I look back I don’t really remember the father that I thought he was. I look straight to the criminal, the sexual criminal he is,” she went on. “But I have his DNA and the main reason why I am so engaged for invisible victims is also for me a way to put a real distance with this guy.”
Darian, a communications manager and mother to one son, has since written a book, entitled I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again (published in December 2024) and said she, nor her mother, have regretted being so visible throughout Pelicot’s proceedings. Gisèle very notably pushed for a public trial so that “shame must change sides.” The decision not only helped to expose the 50 plaintiffs, but cemented Gisèle a hero among survivors.
“I knew we went through something…horrible,” Darian told the BBC. “But that we had to go through it with dignity and strength.”
Still, Darian said that she carries a “crushing double burden” of being the daughter of a victim and her perpetrator.
“You can’t imagine the sadness and the loneliness,” she told the Guardian. “I’ve got a part of his DNA. And it’s difficult to be the daughter of the biggest sexual criminal for the past 10, 20, even 30 years, and at the same time be the daughter of an icon like my mom…I don’t know if it’s better to be the daughter of Gisèle or worse to be the daughter of Dominique Pelicot. I’ll have to live with that.”
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
