Caroline Dorian, the daughter of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, is now a key campaigner for victims of abuse (Picture: Coust Laurent/ABACA/Shutterstock)
The daughter of Dominique Pelicot, jailed for admitting to drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, has said her father ‘should die in prison’.
Dominique, 72, invited dozens of strangers he met on the internet to join him in abusing Gisèle’s unconscious body for almost a decade in France.
In a case that disgusted the nation and inspired women worldwide to speak out against rape culture, Dominique was convicted last month of aggravated rape and other charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He admitted to crushing sleeping tablets into his wife’s food and drink before he and dozens of other men raped her as she lay nearly comatose in their bedroom in the small medieval village of Mazan.
Dominique was also found guilty of raping the wife of one of the 50 men who was also convicted, and of taking and distributing illicit photos of Gisèle, their daughter Caroline Darian and two daughters-in-law.
Caroline told the BBC that she doesn’t believe her father is neither a ‘monster’ nor ‘sick’ and knows what he did.
Gisèle (C) phoned her daughter Caroline (L) to tell her of what she suffered after her ex-husband was arrested (Picture: EPA)
‘He is a dangerous man. There is no way he can get out. No way,’ she said.
Caroline’s mother phoned her in November 2020 to say she had discovered Dominique had been drugging her.
‘At that moment, I lost what was a normal life,’ Caroline told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘I remember I shouted, I cried, I even insulted him. It was like an earthquake. A tsunami.’
Realising that her father was ‘one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 or 30 years’ came with another revelation.
The police showed her not long after her phone call with Gisèle photographs of an unconscious woman lying on a bed that officers believed was her.
Dominique Pelicot during the hearing of the verdict of the court that sentenced him to the maximum term of 20 years in jail (Picture: AFP)
Gisèle, who has divorced her husband, waived anonymity to make the trial public story (Picture: AFP)
‘I know that he drugged me, probably for sexual abuse. But I don’t have any evidence,’ the I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again author said.
Caroline has now become a powerful voice in the fight against drugging someone with malicious intent, known in France as ‘chemical submission’
Weeks after the trial, she struggles to see the man behind bars for drugging and raping her mother as her father.
‘When I look back I don’t really remember the father that I thought he was. I look straight to the criminal, the sexual criminal he is,’ she said.
‘But I have his DNA and the main reason why I am so engaged for invisible victims is also for me a way to put a real distance with this guy.
‘I am totally different from Dominique.’
Gisèle’s poise and courage made her a feminist icon, sparking soul-searching and protests across the country (Picture: AFP)
The case, however, is far from over. Of the 50 other men found guilty, 17 have lodged appeals, potentially plunging the family into more anguish.
The 50 defendants, most found guilty of rape, received sentences from three to 15 years.
Court officials have not confirmed the identity of the 17 men who filed nor why they have appealed. A new trial will take place this autumn.
Dominique has said he will not appeal his sentence.
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