The daughter of Gisèle Pelicot has hit out at her mother in a new book about her father’s shocking sexual abuse.
Caroline Darian claims that she was also a victim of Dominique Pelicot - who was convicted last year after orchestrating a mass rape of his wife.
But Ms Darian claims her mother “did not want to believe or hear” that her daughter was potentially abused by the so-called ‘Monster of Avignon’, and failed to back her own fight for justice.
Gisèle Pelicot emerged as a courageous symbol against rape culture as her husband was jailed for drugging her and recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her while he filmed it. The three-month mass-rape trial in France last autumn saw 51 men convicted for a total of 428 years. Retired electrician Pelicot was jailed for the maximum term of 20 years.
In her new book So That We May Remember, Ms Darian expresses her anger that her mother did not support her claim that she was also raped by her father, 72. It comes after Ms Darian published I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again in December, on the trauma of finding out about what her father had done.
“It is an abandonment too many,” Ms Darian said, adding that the relationship reached a “point of no return” as a result.
The claims are centred around two photos that Dominique Pelicot took of his daughter asleep in underwear that Ms Darian says were not her own. She believes they were taken after having been drugged like Ms Pelicot, 72.
“These two photographs knocked me over … I am sure (there) are others,” she wrote. “I know that I was sedated and abused by my father, but I cannot prove it.”
Mr Pelicot denied sexually assaulting or raping his daughter during the trial. Ms Pelicot declined to answer during the trial when she was asked if she supported her daughter’s claims.
“Her silence says a lot,” Ms Darian says in the book. “I am hit by this implacable reality in the face: my mother does not want to believe me or to hear me. The pain runs right through me. I have spent four years trying to be there for my mother, cherishing the bond that counted so much for me. I feel alone facing a wall of desolation and no one seems to understand.”
When asked about the claims, Ms Pelicot’s lawyer Stéphane Babonneau previously told The Independent: “Caroline has the feeling that she may have been the victim of more, but without evidence she remains with doubt.”
He said the Pelicot family had been “torn apart” by sexual violence, which he described as “absolutely common”.
“Sexual assault happening within families always destroys families – it can destroy lives over generations,” Mr Babonneau added. “What happened in this family is not surprising.”
But Ms Darian also praises her mother’s “dignified, calm and strong” testimony in the book. Ms Pelicot had waived her anonymity and allowed the trial to be public so that “shame will change” sides.
“Those who were at the trial discovered day after day this strength of character, this rectitude, this ability not to flag,” Ms Darian wrote.
Ms Darian also said she believed her father was a serial rapist leaving a trail of victims behind in a series of unsolved cases. Mr Pelicot denies the allegation.
According to The Times, psychologists warned Ms Darian that her relationship with her mother would be unlikely to survive the trial.
“I nevertheless had a lingering hope. I was her only daughter. She could not let go of my hand and especially not in this courtroom. But I am forced to accept that that is the case,” the book said.
Ms Darian wrote she felt she is the “forgotten” victim of the trial, and is left with “this abyssal emptiness, this injustice which crushes me, this vertiginous feeling of suffering”.
On the sentences handed to her father’s co-defendants, she and her brothers Florian and David were “disappointed” as they did not meet prosecutors’ demands.
Ms Darian added that “the court did not grasp the importance of this weapon”, with reference to the drugs central to the trial.
“The legal system had an historic opportunity and partially missed it.”
