“You’re lying! I want to throw up.” 

This is what Caroline Darian shouted, more than once, during the trial of Dominique Pelicot, the man she once called her father. She was disgusted by him, and by the fact that – unbeknown to her, her two brothers and her mother, Gisèle Pelicot, his primary victim – he had been drugging his wife and inviting strangers into their home to rape her while she was unconscious over a period of nine years. Darian, his only daughter, feels sure that he abused her in some capacity, too. But unlike her mother, who bravely waived her anonymity to make the trial public and became a global symbol of solidarity in the process, Darian still hasn’t got answers. She’s resigned to the fact that she probably never will.

Speaking to Stylist after the trial, which found 51 men, including Dominique, guilty of rape and sexual assault, Darian is still reeling from the impact of her father’s crimes and the unexpected spotlight she’s found herself in. She mentions the “double burden” of being the child of both the victim and the abuser. 

“Me and my brothers, we have a lot of respect for Mum because what she did for society and for sexual abuse survivors was a powerful, brave decision,” she says. “And I see why we’re not seen as victims, really, in this whole affair. But it has been like a tsunami for me, collapsing the foundations of my life. I will never be the same. How are you supposed to live a normal life when your father is the most infamous sexual predator of the last 30 years?” 

In an attempt not to drown in this tsunami, as she calls it, Darian started writing a real-time memoir which is now being published in English: I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again. “It was sort of a therapeutic process for me, a way to survive,” she says. “But I also felt strongly that we needed to raise awareness of what can happen inside a home, and of chemical submission, this form of abuse that we’re not talking about enough. It’s not just date-rape drugs in nightclubs; more than half of these cases are people using things you can find in your own medicine cabinet. We need to face up to that truth.”

Anger makes her voice tremble when she relives the long, painful days in court in December. It was the first time she’d seen her father since he’d been caught upskirting women in a local supermarket in 2020, which led to the discovery of thousands of photos and videos revealing the true extent of his “perversity”. It was also her first time facing the scores of men who’d thought nothing of using her mother’s limp, lifeless body for sexual gratification, many of whom continued to insist they’d done nothing wrong. 

“Unlike most victims of sexual abuse, and particularly domestic chemical submission, my mother had everything on the table – there was so much physical evidence of what these men did to her. And even then, you realise how hard it is to be recognised as a real victim.” Defence lawyers questioned Gisèle relentlessly, looking up from the pictures of her splayed body to ask if she may have ‘led the men on’ in some way.  

While the vast majority of the evidence showed Gisèle, there were two photos recovered that were unmistakably of Caroline, in bed in her underwear. It was found during the trial that Dominique had hidden cameras in the guest bedroom to film his daughter naked and made photomontages of her and Gisèle, comparing their bodies, which he shared online under the title ‘The slut’s daughter’. In court, he claimed he “never touched” her, but the revelations continue to haunt Darian.

“I don’t have any memories of when those pictures of me were taken, and I don’t know what happened before or after. I just have this deep, deep conviction that I was sexually abused by him, because otherwise, why did he drug me, and why did he take these pictures putting me in the same positions as my mother?” She pauses for a moment. “It’s really difficult not knowing, but I know I’m representative of the majority of victims of this kind of abuse in that you don’t have the evidence, just the feeling. I want to give those people a voice.”

The Avignon trial captured the world’s attention not only because of Gisele’s bravery and her powerful statement that it was time for “shame to change sides”, but because it seemed to reveal a dark truth about what ‘everyday men’ were capable of. Dominique went online and found at least 50 men willing to rape his unconscious wife within a 40-mile radius of their home in Mazan, southern France, all while portraying himself as the picture of concern when she complained of memory blackouts and grogginess due to the sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication he was crushing into her food.

“We talk about how abuse can happen to anyone, but we don’t want to talk about how it can be perpetrated by anyone,” says Darian. “Looking at all the different kinds of men in that courtroom – fathers, grandfathers, journalists, firemen, nurses – it has changed me. Now, I think that threats are everywhere. It’s not about being paranoid, but I don’t trust easily.”

How could she, when she’s forced to square the sunny days spent visiting her parents in their Provençal home with the catalogue of horrors that happened at night when they were left alone. “I realised at 40 years old that I don’t know the man who raised me, that really he was split in two. The man who was a social guy appreciated by his friends and family, and the other man he hid from us, the sexual abuser,” she says. “When I look back on my life now I realise I was betrayed. I was pretty close to my father. We did a lot together, went to concerts, took bike rides – but you start to look at all of your memories differently. You reconsider what was a lie and what was reality.”

With the trial behind her and her father in prison, where she “hopes he will die” serving his 20-year sentence, her siblings and mother are trying to pick up the pieces and find a way to move on. “I think we’ll all find our place, eventually. I think we need to find a reason why, in a way – a direction that will help us move forward.” Her own purpose has been to start up a charity, Don’t Put Me Under, to advocate for victims of chemical submission and drug-assisted assault, and push a government inquiry into what she says is an underestimated issue in France and around the world.

“Right from the start, I had this strong conviction that our family case wasn’t an isolated one, and as I began to meet with health professionals and victims, I realised that conviction was well founded,” she says. “We really need to improve the way we collect evidence: blood tests and urine tests but also hair sampling, which is one of the most reliable ways to find psychoactive substances in someone’s system. We have to start talking about all this, but really our aim now is to encourage victims to come forward and know they’re going to be listened to, believed and get the support they need.”

She is passionate about encouraging us all to play our part so that no one ever has to go through what her mother has gone through, and what she herself has been subjected to, at the hands of someone who professes to love them. “Pay attention to your closest ones, keep a dialogue open. We can all do more to make sure victims feel able to speak up and be believed,” she says. “And that, I suppose, is my mission now. I just want to turn my anger and hatred into something useful. That’s the way I’m managing on a daily basis. I just don’t want this to happen ever again.” 

I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again by Caroline Darian (£16.99, Leap) is out now

Images: Olivier Roller; Getty; Leap