Daughter says French rapist Dominique Pelicot ‘should die in prison’

LONDON – The daughter of Dominique Pelicot, the Frenchman found guilty of drugging his then wife so dozens of strangers could rape her, said in comments released on Jan 11 that her father “should die in prison”.

In her first television interview since Pelicot was

jailed for 20 years

in December following a trial that horrified France, Ms Caroline Darian told the BBC her father “was always a sexual pervert”.

“He should die in prison. He is a dangerous man,” said Ms Darian in Pelicot Trial: The Daughter’s Story, which the British broadcaster will air on Jan 13.

Pelicot, 72, was convicted of drugging and raping Ms Gisele Pelicot and soliciting dozens of men to do the same for more than a decade.

Some 50 co-defendants

were also found guilty

and handed various sentences of between three and 15 years following a three-month public trial in the southern French city of Avignon.

Ms Pelicot waived her right to a closed trial and was

hailed as a hero

for her courage and dignity.

Ms Darian said: “There’s no way you can wake up one morning and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to drug my wife.’

“So, I think there are two Dominiques co-existing in him. He decided to choose the dark side.”

She added: “I don’t know if he is a monster, but he knew perfectly what he did. He’s not sick. He did everything consciously.”

Ms Darian herself believes she was drugged and raped by Pelicot, after pictures of her naked and unconscious body were found among the detailed records her father kept of his crimes.

Pelicot denied during the trial that he had ever abused her as the two clashed in the courtroom.

“He’s always lying,” Ms Darian told the BBC.

“I know that he drugged me, probably for sexual abuse, but I don’t have any evidence.”

Ms Darian added that she now sees her father as “a stranger”.

“I look straight to the criminal, to the sexual criminal he is,” she said.

The release of the interview comes as Ms Darian will narrate a TV documentary on the use of drugs to enable rape and sexual abuse.

Slated for broadcast by France 2 on Jan 21, the 90-minute film is set to include testimony from six other victims raped after being drugged unwittingly. AFP