The Sunday magazine46:04Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisèle Pelicot, tells her own story
Warning: This article can affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone who is affected.
The explosive rape process against Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men in Avignon, France, may have come to the end on December 19, but the story was far over for his daughter Caroline Darian.
This attempt ended with Dominique Pelicot, who had repeatedly found himself guilty against his wife Gisèle Pelicot over the course of a decade, and invited other men to do this while he was filming abuse. Fifty other men who were most accused of raping them while she was passed out were also found guilty.
During the trial, Dominique Pelicot was condemned without her consent for recording and sharing his daughter’s intimate photos of his daughter
At the beginning of this month, Darian submitted a legal complaint against Dominique, in which he accused her of putting it too drugs and sexually abused. Allegations that he denies.
Since her mother’s abuse was discovered in 2020, Darian has devoted himself to the sensitization to chemical submission. Darian’s Association and social media campaign, M’entorpas: Stop Soumission Chimique, translated “not fall asleep: stop chemical submission”.
The 46 -year -old Darian announces how the ordeal was for her mother and in a new memoir. I will never call him a father again.
She spoke to Piya Chatopadhyay, moderator of CBC radio The Sunday magazinein New York this week. Here is part of your conversation.
The last number of years was extremely difficult for her and her family. I just ask myself how do you keep up?
That is a good question. You know, I go because I fight. Because I am busy with this matter against chemical submission. And now it has become part of my new normal life. So I wanted to say that I am fine. I’m fine, but sometimes it’s still difficult.
In the meantime, many people know the history of their mother, but today we will actually talk about their history, which begins in a suburb near Paris, in which they grow up in the 1980s and 90s with their mother, their father, their two brothers David and Florian. How was family life?
We were a happy and a united family. I was pretty close (with) my father, my mother, my two brothers. We have such beautiful and funny and funny memories. I mean we had a good childhood. I think we were really, very privileged … because our house was always full of people, full of festive moments.
And even if it was sometimes not easy because life is not easy, we really thought that we were happy.
How was your relationship especially with your father when you were young?
He was my confidant. He gave me a lot of things when I was a child. He was there for me. He (taught me) to swim, drive. He was there to encourage me during my studies. So we had a close relationship, like daughter and father, and where I talked to him about many things … it was a really precious relationship with my father and I lost her.
Over time, they and their brothers, all adults now, now begin to experience their mother to experience things like memory loss, fatigue and inexplicable gynecological problems. What do you and your family think at that time?
The first symptoms started in 2013, 2014. We found that she started losing weight. She was often tired. Sometimes we have a few calls with us and she had some incoherency. Around 2016 we asked you to go to (the doctor) because we feared that it developed a kind of mental illness such as dementia such as Alzheimer’s or the like. So she started seeing some doctors and taking some exams, and they never found anything.
In 2020 everything they thought was broken. Your father was caught and filming women in a local supermarket. This led the police to thousands of photos and videos of their mother. She was in drugs, unconscious and was raped by him and numerous other men. When you heard about the first time, these first moments, what was going on through your head?
I was shocked and it was as if everything was put down in me. It was as if all of my own worlds collapsed, my whole foundation. Because I noticed in a few seconds by this call that my life would never be the same. I had to see that I didn’t know my own father.
They write that this revitalization of these beautiful memories existed and they write: “I have the feeling that I was watered down by the past.” What do you mean by that?
I wanted to look at all these childhood memories differently … for me it was authentic moments. They were real moments of love or sharing, but probably not for him, not for my father. I can’t call him that. My father is dead, even if he is still alive.
You continue to write: “I’m afraid that I can never hate him.” How did you work through these complex, these complicated feelings?
At the beginning of this process I saw him and for a few seconds I saw him as my father. And then I stopped. It is a mental process because I had to get some answers. I had to get the truth. Before this process there was more than two and a half years of examination. So we discovered so many things, (so) terrible things that when I looked at him in this dish, I looked at the criminal.
How was it for you in this courtroom, Caroline and heard about the terrible things he had done to her mother?
It helps me with my mourning process. I was so angry. What damage in our own family … … if you had to listen every day (for four months), it hurts all of these things.
You also watch the whole world.
Watch my mother, yes. Support of my mother. We were really proud of them…. And even if we are all still in pain, what she has done shows an extraordinary woman.
We all heard of their mother, but they also found two deleted pictures of them in a bed in their 30s. The lights are on. The covers are withdrawn. You wear a top and underwear. The police call them and says we want to show them these two photos. I can’t imagine how this moment is for her.
It is unbearable. For a few seconds, a few minutes, I don’t even recognize myself. This is what we call a dissociation phase in which you are in a post -traumatic situation.
He was convicted of intimate photos of them without their permission. However, they believe that these photos provide evidence for further crimes. What do you think has happened?
Very serious things that are similar (like), what my mother did … I know that he put me under drugs. And he probably touched me and probably raped me. But you know, I don’t have the proof like my mother.
You have no memory of it.
No, like my mother.
You confronted your father during the exam. He denied you to put yourself under drugs and sexually touch you. He still denies this today.
I said, “I know what you did.” And he said, “I didn’t do anything, Caroline.”
You scream him at the end of the process. I think you screamed: “You are lying! You don’t have the courage to say the truth.”
It was really difficult to shout him to say that in this dish if you can’t say anything. But it was the only time that I had the opportunity to say to my father what I had in my heart. It was the last time I will never see him again.
They submitted a formal legal complaint against their father and accused him of putting them under drugs and sexually abused them. He always denied this and he continues. His lawyer has found that the prosecutor does not give enough “objective elements” for persecution in the previous procedure. As I understand it, the police will investigate. The prosecutors decide whether to go to court.
And I hope so. You know if you are desperately looking for the truth, after your own restoration, for your own reparation to keep going with your normal life – because you know when you have a deep conviction, but you are the only one who screams and says it, but nobody listens to you – it’s so difficult. And I have a chance. My brothers believe me, my husband believes me, my friends, but justice (system) does not believe me now because there is not enough evidence.
So I now have this new complaint to the French judiciary to open this case and to receive further investigations because they were overwhelmed by this file because they focused on Gisèle, and that’s okay. However, please forget no other potential victim in this family.
For those who have been sexually attacked, there is support from crisis lines and local support services through the Ending Violence Association of Canada database.
For everyone who is affected by violence in the family or an intimate partner, there is support through support through Crisis lines and local support services.
If you fear in direct danger or fear for your security or that of others around you, please call 911.
