“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.”