In the Pelicot family, one date will remain engraved in memories forever: November 2, 2020. On that day, a police lieutenant revealed to Gisèle Pelicot what the investigators had extracted from her husband’s computer and telephone: hundreds of photos and videos showing her lifeless and raped by her husband and unknown assailants. In addition to this date, Caroline Darian, the couple’s daughter, adds a specification: “At 8:25 pm, my life literally turned upside down.” Her sisters-in-law will also recount the phone call Gisèle Pelicot made to her two sons that evening. The eldest vomited after hanging up the phone, while the youngest paled until he collapsed on a kitchen chair, “in a state of shock.”
Before the criminal court, three deeply upset women recounted in turn how that day “their world fell apart.” They described a “veritable cataclysm that fell on them” and, in the witness stand four years later, they were also looking for “a way to heal.”
“Tell me, Mr. President, how does someone like me go about getting better, hoping to have a normal life as a woman, a normal sex life? How does one go about rebuilding oneself from the ashes when one knows that their father is undoubtedly the greatest sexual predator of the last 20 years?” In response to Caroline Darian’s questions, the presiding judge could only pledge to “do everything possible to bring this trial to a successful conclusion.”
Caroline Darian had already turned a promise into the title of a book she published in 2022 to condemn chemical submission as a weapon of rape: Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler Papa (“And I stopped calling you Dad”). But in front of the magistrates, she still spoke of an “affectionate dad,” of her love for “this fine, considerate, benevolent man.” Until the confrontation with a policeman showing her naked photos of herself asleep. All she saw was a woman she didn’t know. “But Madame, you have the same brown spot on your right cheek,” said the investigator. “Now I understand that the man who was my father, in whom I had total confidence, respectful of his daughter whom he had encouraged in her choices, photographed me without my knowledge.” Caroline Darian recalled the crisis this revelation provoked: “I realize that I’m drugged myself. Not me asleep, but me drugged. I don’t want to put my father down today, the law will deal with judging him.”
‘My repair will take time’
In the course of her deposition, Dominique Pelicot becomes “Dominique” or “my genitor” especially when she mentions a photomontage with her mother, captioned “la fille de la salope (“the daughter of the whore”).” “Beyond its unspeakable vulgarity, the caption makes me want to vomit. And this photomontage has been circulated, commented on,” she replied to her lawyer. Her book, she explained, has freed her from a burden, but “I have to face my demons. My reparation will take time, it’s difficult.”
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