Inside France’s chamber of horrors: ‘He dressed Maman like a low-rent prostitute’

Caroline Darian – whose father is on trial for drugging his wife and allowing men to rape her – on how the revelations shattered her life

The family “chamber of horrors”, as Caroline Darian puts it, was exposed, quite out of the blue, on Monday November 2 2020. It was the middle of the Covid crisis in France, and Darian had just taken her six-year-old son back to school wearing an obligatory facemask. Her father, Dominique Pélicot, sent his grandson a reassuring message online: “My poor boy. Be brave. Love, Grandpa.” But then, only a couple of hours later, the phone rang. It was Darian’s mother: “Your father is going to jail”. 
And just like that, what Darian called her boring but successful world – “husband, son, home, job I loved” – was turned upside down. Her father was accused of drugging Darian’s mother and his wife of 50 years – the woman he had met as sweethearts when they were both 18 – and inviting dozens of men to rape her over at least a decade. Suddenly, the Pélicot family was the epicentre of a profoundly disturbing case that, now it has come to court, is outraging France – and the world beyond. As Darian was to write later: “You don’t know the value of boring until you’ve lost it.” Instead she was left with a “family cataclysm”.
The details of that 2020 telephone call that changed everything were, as Darian explained in her memoir, And I Stopped Calling You Daddy, almost too grim to take in. The book changes some names [Dominique becomes Louis for example] but explains how the case unfolded, how her mother – in real life Gisèle Pélicot – called that day in 2020 from her home in the small town of Mazan, 20 miles north-east of Avignon, in the south of France, to reveal that her husband, then 67, had been caught red-handed filming up the skirts of three women in a supermarket and locked up for 48 hours. In the meantime, police had seized his phone, camcorder and computer. There they found images that allegedly showed Gisèle, then also 67, asleep, drugged and being raped. After trawling through some 20,000 digital images, police counted 92 rapes committed by 72 men, of whom 51 were formally identified. 
“Caro, it’s true,” Gisèle had told her stunned daughter. “I had to look at some of the photos at the police station. I thought my heart would stop beating.” Until then, neither woman had had the faintest idea. It turned out that Dominique had been administering date rape drugs to incapacitate his wife. And allegedly not just her. Yesterday Caroline Darian broke down as the court heard that among her father’s trove of photos were pictures of his daughter as a grown woman, front and back, in her underwear, which he had compared to similar images of his wife and shared with others. 
When Caroline called her two brothers, they were equally stunned. But then one remembered the last supper he had spent with his parents in the summer holidays of 2018. “Only a few minutes after sitting down Maman was swaying in her chair as though she was drunk,” he is quoted as saying. “Suddenly her whole body was drained of energy, like a rag doll.”
“It happens. It’s better if I take her to bed,” his father had said at the time. But Darian adds: “In reality the cocktail of drugs, poured into her glass of rosé, were beginning to take effect.”
Immediately after being notified of their father’s actions four years ago, the three siblings sped southwards to their mother’s aid. In Avignon, they met the police team leading the investigation. Officers explained that their father had not just allowed, but recruited dozens of men on web forums to rape their mother “for no financial gain”. 
“Ultimate perversity,” Caroline writes. “Father, who always had money problems, didn’t profit from Maman. He did it purely for his pleasure.” The drugs were hidden – in the garage, in his walking shoes, in a sports sock. Had he shown any remorse after confessing? “No. Your father simply thanked me for relieving him of a burden,” the officer replied. 
Photos revealed the extent of the horror. Caroline’s father had apparently led a double life, consuming Viagra, testing himself for HIV; she writes that sometimes he forbade those he invited to rape his wife from wearing a condom. In one photo Caroline’s mother appears naked, on her stomach, with a man behind her. “The other photos are all similar – except with different men,” she recounts. As Caroline and her brothers left the police station, she turned to the officer in charge. “Tell my father I’ll never forgive him and he’s ruined our lives.”
But there was more to come. Shortly after leaving the police station, she was summoned back. The police needed to check two pictures with her. They were of a young woman, sleeping on her left side, wearing beige knickers, in bed. “Zoomed in on her bottom”. Only when the police pointed out a birthmark was Caroline able to identify herself. “Normally I’m a light sleeper. So I had been drugged too.” It turned out that the second photo had been taken in her own home. “I was his second prey.”
That night in November 2020, the three siblings had to return to their parents’ home with their mother to clear it out. “Coming back into the house, with his smell, was unbearable.” On her father’s desk was visible the empty space where his confiscated computer had sat. 
By the end of the week, her mother had gone to live with one of her brothers and Caroline, suffering a breakdown, was briefly confined to psychiatric care. According to her book, the last time her mother had been raped was just two weeks previously, on October 22. Back at home, knowing that details of the case were already emerging, she was forced to attempt to explain the sordid situation to her young son as best she could.
The family began to fracture. An unconscious victim, with no memory of the abuse, Caroline’s mother, the book recounts, found herself instinctively sympathising with her husband. “He’s not happy where he is, you know. He’s suffering,” she told her astonished daughter. It left Caroline in despair: “Because of my father, now I’m losing my mother too…”
From prison, Caroline says, her father managed to get a letter to her mother. “I know I’m here because of what I’ve done to the love of my life, to my family, my friends,” it said. Caroline describes it as the missive of an arch-manipulator. “I’m not surprised. He’s trying to divide us.”
As the family lawyer began to receive evidence in the months that followed, alleged details began to emerge of how her father had boasted online of the power of the drugs and how he had mastered dosage, quoting one message: “Last time I didn’t do enough; this time, no problem, we can go for it.” His approach was, according to his daughter, always the same: first he would reach out to potential abusers on an internet chatroom, then ask those selected if, like him, they were into “the rape method” before posting pictures of his wife on a private forum called “without their knowledge”. 
“He dressed her like a low-rent prostitute,” noted his appalled daughter. He did not have to go far to find willing participants. Most of those who responded lived close by. Finally, he would draw a map of how to get to the house, photograph it, and send it to those he had selected, guiding them on their final approach by text message. So as not to alert the neighbours, cars had to be parked at a nearby gym. Every detail was considered. No one could wear perfume or smoke, so as to leave no trace of their presence. Mobile phones had to be left in cars, to avoid the risk of them ringing and waking the victim. They even had to wash their hands in warm water so as not to shock his slumbering wife with cold fingers. After undressing in the kitchen, abusers were advised to keep their clothes handy in case they had to leave in a hurry. Defendants in the trial were aged from 21 to 68 at the time of the alleged rapes. They include a fireman, lorry driver, municipal councillor, IT worker in a bank, prison guard, nurse and a journalist. 
When asked if he was sexually attracted to his daughter, he said no. “She’s not my type. She’s much younger than I’m used to.” Finally: “I never touched my daughter.” 
As the months passed, and the current trial approached, Caroline attempted to rationalise what had happened to her family, and how each member was coping. “My mother is sunny, funny and dynamic,” she notes. And strong. “Even the day when she learned that one of her rapists had HIV, she didn’t collapse.” A subsequent HIV test proved negative. In September 2022, Caroline set up a campaign group to raise awareness of the use of drugs in rape and sexual violence. That campaign is one reason they have waived anonymity at today’s trial. “There is still so much to do,” she notes.
But she struggled to escape the shadow of her father. “As we approach the trial date, when I can sleep, I find myself dreaming of him,” she writes. “I tried in vain to understand the true identity of the man who raised me. My father is a criminal and I have to learn to live with this grotesque reality, to accept being torn apart by the needs of justice, truth, and the love I once felt for him. I’m scared I’ll never be able to hate him.”
Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler papa (And I Stopped Calling You Daddy) by Caroline Darian is published in French by HarperCollins