The daughter of the French man currently on trial for drugging his wife and orchestrating dozens of men to rape her believes she was also a victim of the heinous scheme, describing her father as “the worst sexual predator of the last 20 years.”
Caroline Darian, 45, testified in Avignon court against her father, 71-year-old Dominique Pélicot, who is accused of filming men raping his wife, Gisèle, 72, while she was unconscious from being drugged.
Darian identified herself as the nude, unconscious woman in two pictures found on Pélicot’s computer, along with thousands of other images showing men, including neighbors, abusing Gisèle.
“I realized right away I was drugged in that photo,” said Darian, who authored a book about the ordeal titled “And I Stopped Calling You Daddy.”
A judge revealed that the images were stored in a file named “Around my daughter, naked,” with a caption calling Darian “the slut’s daughter.” Darian found the caption repulsive and stated, “the caption makes me want to vomit,” as reported by Le Monde.
The mention of the images in court caused Darian to storm out of the courtroom earlier in the week. One of the pictures showed Darian in someone else’s underwear.
Darian suspects she was drugged and assaulted by strangers similar to her mother’s experience, an allegation Pélicot denies.
“How does a person like me heal, hope to have a normal woman’s life, a normal sex life?” Darian questioned in court. “How does one rebuild oneself from the ashes knowing their father is undoubtedly the worst sexual predator of the last 20 years?”
Pélicot has not been charged with abusing Darian but is accused of invading her privacy by taking, recording, or transmitting a sexual image of her without consent.
Darian appeared in court multiple times alongside her mother, who police believe was unknowingly raped at least 92 times by 72 different men.
Of the 72 men identified, they are also being tried and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, including a fireman, a prison guard, a nurse, and a journalist.
Authorities claim Pélicot recruited the rapists through a website, instructing them to undress outside the bedroom and leave if Gisèle showed any signs of waking up. He admitted to using powerful tranquilizers to incapacitate his wife before the assaults on online forums.
The case was exposed in 2020 when Pélicot was caught filming up women’s skirts in a shopping center.
If found guilty of rape charges, Pélicot faces 50 years in prison. He is also facing separate charges for the rape and murder of a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991, which he denies, as well as an attempted rape in 1999, to which he has admitted following a DNA match.
