‘Family destroyed’: Children of French rape victim speak of heartbreak

AVIGNON, France – The children of a Frenchman who for a decade drugged their mother to have her raped by dozens of strangers spoke on Nov 18 of their heartbreak and grief, with the daughter insisting she has been “forgotten” despite being also abused.

The couple’s children spoke in court in the southern city of Avignon as the trial entered its final stages, with the final set of accused testifying ahead of sentencing requests later in the week and a verdict in December.

Since early September,

Dominique Pelicot has been in the dock along with 49 other men.

Another defendant is still at large.

Pelicot’s former wife Gisele has become a feminist icon by refusing to be ashamed and demanding the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

Pelicot documented the assaults of his wife with meticulous precision on a hard drive in a folder labelled “abuse”, leading police to track down 50 men besides him.

Gisele’s daughter, who uses the pen name Caroline Darian, believes she was also assaulted by her father.

He photographed Caroline and his sons’ wives without their knowledge and posted their naked pictures on social networks, along with pornographic photo montages.

On Nov 18, Darian, 45, said she had been “forgotten” during the trial, adding she was convinced that she too had been drugged and sexually assaulted by her father, like her mother Gisele.

“The only difference between her and me is the lack of evidence concerning me. For me, it’s an absolute tragedy”, said Darian, who in 2022 wrote a book, Et J’ai Cesse De T’appeler Papa (“And I Stopped Calling You Dad”).

“In your disgusting files”, she told her father, “you don’t look at me like a father looks at his daughter”.

“But you will never have the courage to tell the truth,” she added.

Pelicot has confessed to rape. He denies, however, that he abused his daughter.

‘Trial of a whole family’

Darian’s 50-year-old brother David said that for him it was “the trial of a whole family, which has been totally destroyed”.

“We hope that in the future, we will be able to erase the man to my left from our minds,” he said, referring to his father.

Throughout his testimony, David described his father as “this gentleman” and expressed hope he and his co-defendants “will be punished for the horrors and atrocities they committed against my mother”.

Looking his father in the eye, he urged him to tell the court “about what you did to my sister, who suffers every day and will suffer for the rest of her life, because I don’t think you’ll ever tell the truth”.

“And about my son too,” David added, referring to exchanges between Pelicot and one of his grandchildren, whom he had allegedly asked to “play doctor”.

His father insisted he had done “nothing” to them.

David had earlier described how the children had moved all their belongings “from the house of horror” in the town of Mazan when they learnt of the decade-long rapes.

“You said she was a saint, but you were the devil himself”, David’s brother Florian said to their father.

‘Had I known’

For the past 10 weeks the court has considered the charges against the 47 defendants, with the last four men set to complete their testimony later on Nov 18.

Joseph C., a 69-year-old pensioner who visited the couple in June 2020, took the stand earlier on Nov 18.

The defendant is on trial for sexual assault for touching Gisele.

“It was difficult to get an erection,” he said, adding that he stayed for 10 minutes and then left.

“Had I known what he was doing to his wife I would have reported him. This is atrocious.”

Previous defendants have claimed they believed they were taking part in a game played by a libertine couple and were unaware Gisele had been rendered unconscious with drugs.

After Joseph C., 43-year-old freelance journalist Nicolas F. admitted he had “lacked judgment and strength of character”.

He said he went to Mazan to have sex with Dominique Pelicot, adding that he performed fellatio on him. Nicolas F. nevertheless also penetrated Gisele digitally and performed an anulingus act on her.

Nicolas F. is also on trial for possessing child pornography images. He allegedly offered a young girl to “relieve” her labrador, according to a message from 2010.

The men have been confronted with the videos of their acts, filmed and meticulously catalogued by Pelicot.

Of the co-defendants, only 14 have admitted the charges of aggravated rape, for which most of them face up to 20 years’ imprisonment.

The others deny having raped Gisele and maintain that they thought they were taking part in sex games. AFP