Losing the pervert father she thought was her protector, drifting apart from her desperately traumatised mother... the tortured diary of the Monster of Avignons daughter
The memories paint a picture of an idyllic, quintessentially French childhood with a loving Papa.
The memories paint a picture of an idyllic, quintessentially French childhood with a loving Papa.
Recalling a winter holiday when she was 11, Caroline Darian writes: Winter 1990. A skiing holiday at Risoul in the Hautes-Alps. You took me on my first red run, my first red slope. Im not yet very confident on skis. At the top of the slope you went ahead. Terrified, I went on alone, slipping badly, learning how to ski.
It takes me almost two hours to finally arrive. I end up in tears. I scream when I see you. You say: You see, you got there in the end. I told you so.
Another time, she describes father and daughter bike rides through the French countryside: Your voice when we were going uphill, Dont give up! Courage!. Your joy at reaching the Madeleine pass. We take in the breathtaking view together, in silence.
Then are recollections, too, of her dad in more recent years: In the shade of the plane tree, with a glass of pastis in your hand, you turn to me with laughter in your eyes.
Gisele Pelicot (C), and her daughter Caroline Darian (L) speak with the media after leaving the criminal court in Avignon
Gisele Pelicot, 72 arrives at court in Avignon France. Week 2 day 8 of the trial.
The Pelicots remarried in 2007. They had initially split to prevent Gisele being liable for debts her husband had run up
You ask me about my life, my work. Then you go off to check on the swimming pool, to put on some music, dance with your grandchildren.
Yet its these loving memories of an apparently supportive father which now haunt her the most.
For Caroline is the daughter of Dominique Pelicot, the 71-year-old Monster of Avignon on trial in France for allegedly serially drugging his wife Gisele over a ten-year period in which he invited more than 70 men to rape her via a depraved internet chat room, sometimes joining in while he filmed.
It is also claimed that he secretly took indecent images of Caroline in her underwear and stored them in a file called The Sluts daughter.
But its not his grotesque acts for which he is on trial that Caroline finds most difficult to live with.
Rather, according to her diaries, which The Mail on Sunday gained exclusive access to, its remembering the happy times that are real torture.
I am ashamed of ever loving him, she writes. Later, she addresses him directly: You no longer exist for me.
We thought you were good, honest and loyal. We may never know how perverse you are.
The diaries, kept by Caroline in the wake of her fathers shocking arrest in 2020, were published in France as the memoir I No Longer Call Him Daddy and reveal the extraordinary tragedy which has torn through this once seemingly respectable family.
Who is my father, really? Caroline writes in November 2020.
Where is the man who protected me, took me to school, cheered me on when I was playing sport, encouraged my studies and later my career?
The man who took care of his grandchildren, played with them and seemed fulfilled by his family life. How can one lead a double life and deceive the world for so many years? How to reconcile such a tender image with such a monster?
Perhaps Caroline summed it up best when she wrote: You dont know the value of boring until youve lost it.
Dominique Pelicot pictured on holiday to the Isle of Ré in 2018 with his wife Gisele - two years before he was arrested for drugging her and arranging for men to rape her
Dominique and Gisele Pelicot on their first wedding day in April 1973, when they were 21 years old. The couple went on to have three children and later divorced
Gisele Pelicot arriving at court on day 8 of her husbands trial in Avignon
Caroline, 45, told the Avignon court on Friday how she believed her father had drugged her too, after police showed her photos of her lying unconscious on a bed in her mothers underwear
Caroline and her two brothers David and Florian had enjoyed an idyllic childhood and for most of their lives were blessed with a stable and happy family life
For the past fortnight, she and her mother have maintained a united front, walking side by side into Avignons Palais de Justice courtroom for Pelicots trial: their shared courage is nothing less than staggering.
Im so proud of her, said Caroline, 46, after her mum, who has waived her legal right to anonymity, gave harrowing evidence not only against her husband but against all the men alleged to have raped her between 2011 and 2020 while she was unconscious.
Married mother-of-one Caroline believes she was also drugged and says she will never know for sure if she was also raped. But while the knowledge that they are both victims has brought them together in court, Carolines diary reveals that another drama has been playing out behind the Pelicot familys closed doors.
The relationship between mother and daughter has been on a knife edge for four years, with former electrician Pelicot, a grandfather of seven, trying to manipulate and drive a wedge between the pair even from inside his prison cell.
Pelicot was arrested after being caught secretly photographing and filming women beneath their skirts in a supermarket near their home in the village of Mazan, in Provence. After a police search of his phone and home computer, they discovered around 20,000 pornographic photographs and videos of the orchestrated rapes of his wife and two photos of Caroline, unwittingly captured wearing only her underwear.
Two months later, police told the family the true extent of Pelicots actions against his wife, marking, as Caroline wrote, a line between this sordidness and our lives which belonged to the world before. Gisele, now 71, told her daughter: Your father is going to jail. In that instant, what Caroline called her successful but humdrum world – husband, son, home, job I loved – was upended.
The shock of what she calls the family cataclysm was profound, the contrast marked with what had happened earlier that day.
Just hours before, Pelicot had soothed her young sons fears about having to wear a mask when attending school during the Covid pandemic.
Her fathers message on Facebook said: Good luck for this slightly special return to school. Your Gramps who loves you. It was to be the last exchange between father and daughter.
In the following days, as Caroline tried to process the knowledge of what her father had done to her mother, she also learned of the photos Pelicot had taken and kept of her.
But rather than further unite the two women, their different ways of coping put an unbearable strain on their relationship.
On the day she learned of his crimes, Caroline recalls, her mother returned home from the police station and washed and ironed her husbands clothes.
And when self-pitying Pelicot complained to her about prison conditions, Gisele even packed up a bag of clothes for him, something his closest friends, revolted by his actions, refused to do.
The mother-of-three had moved to the Provence village with her husband, former electricity worker Dominique, from Villiers-sur-Marne, near Paris, in 2013
Gisele P. re-enters the courthouse during the trial of her husband accused of drugging her for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan
Gisele Pelicot speaks to the press alongside her lawyer on September 5, outside the courtroom in Avignon, France
Because of my father, I am losing my mother, a desperate Caroline wrote after learning that despite being banned from contacting his wife, he had smuggled a letter from prison to Gisele via another prisoner, begging forgiveness and pleading with her not to abandon him.
Hes still toying with his puppet, Caroline added, after learning that her mother had tried to keep the letter a secret from her and refused to let her see it.
Indeed, despite being told how her husband allegedly invited more than 70 men, aged between 22 and 71, to rape her while she was unconscious, a traumatised Gisele appears at first to have found it impossible to harden her heart against the man she had loved for more than half a century.
They had met in Paris in 1971 and married two years later when both were 21.
His career, first working in the nuclear power industry and later, buying, renting and selling property, ensured a comfortable life for the couple and their three children, Caroline and her younger brothers David and Florian.
At one stage, Gisele even defended her husband against her daughter, who recalls how her mother told her: He wasnt always the devil you describe.
He has done a lot for you and also for your brothers. I was happy with him. I would rather remember the good times.
Caroline fears that her mother is suffering something akin to Stockholm Syndrome, a disorder which sees some victims of kidnap empathising with their captors.
My father has turned her inside out to see if he still has a hold over her, she adds.
On several occasions, mother and daughter rowed on the phone, with Caroline warning Gisele that she was being manipulated and Gisele then telling her daughter: Im old enough to make my own mind up.
After being shown evidence of Pelicots actions and his confession, Caroline says she is in an unquenchable rage.
But her mother, she writes, does not seem to have appreciated the enormity of words spoken by a man who claims to be a good husband and a good father.
Mum and I will never have the same understanding of his character and his actions. I feel shes shutting down as a form of denial, a protective mechanism that would cause me to lose control if she was in front of me. Later, when Caroline took her mother to see the judge and hear the details of her fathers actions, she noticed that Mum doesnt react. I realise that, psychologically, she cannot admit the unthinkable and see things for what they are. Its unbearable for her.
She tries to convince herself that the man she loved for so many years was not always such a depraved sex predator.
She tries to find extenuating circumstances for him.
Worst was her mothers inability to accept the evidence that her husband of 50 years had also secretly made indecent images of their daughter.
Madame Pelicot is determined that the public knows that she played no part in her husbands warped sexual fantasies that he played out at their picturesque chalet home in the Provence village of Mazan (pictured)
A court drawing shows Madame Pelicot taking the stand, facing her husband and the 50 others accused of raping her
The son of Gisele Pelicot, Florian (L) and her daughter Caroline Peyronnet (R) leave the criminal court in Avignon, France, 05 September 2024
In a diary entry for December 2020, she writes: Relations with mum have become strained. She cant imagine that I could also have been a victim of my father.
The idea is intolerable to her and I understand. But I am also angry at her for not being able to consider my doubts, to hear my rage and my pain.
She persists in telling me not to inflict such nervous and psychological tension on myself.
Officially, there is no evidence of chemical submission relating to me. No trace of molestation or rape. And yet, that doesnt reassure me. I also know that she is hurt and trying her best to keep her head above water. She is in survival mode. Bit by bit shes settling into a kind of numbness in order to protect herself while Im fighting with all my might against my own demons.
By December 2020, Caroline and Giseles relationship was so fractured, they spent Christmas apart. At the time, her youngest brother Florian appears to have sided with her mother while his brother David stood by Caroline.
It is thought Pelicot has tried to contact his sons but has not written to Caroline since the Facebook message he posted on his grandsons first day back at school in 2020.
In a diary entry from April 2021, Caroline writes: Im so different to my mum when I think about it. Her psychological defence mechanism remains a mystery to me. As indicated by her book title, Caroline – who hasnt seen her father since his 2020 arrest – no longer calls him dad, referring to him instead as my progenitor.
What a stark contrast to her memories of earlier times: descriptions of the family home in Vaucluse with pale blue shutters and olive trees, family barbecues, noisy games of Trivial Pursuit and summer evenings sipping aperitifs on the terrace.
Caroline recalls her fathers joy on the day she passed her senior school baccalaureat exams aged 18 and then got a degree.
And perhaps most affectingly, she recounts the speech Pelicot gave at his 50th birthday party, to the assembled friends and family, saying: Mum nestled into your neck; you said thank you for the most beautiful person I have ever met, my everything. For all these years of happiness.
And you finished by saying: Thank you, life.
Carolines diary finishes at the end of November 2021, just over a year after the earth-shattering day she lost the father she knew.
Almost another three years passed before she set eyes on her progenitor last week across a packed Avignon court.
Writing, she says, is my therapy for transcending this trauma. Im full of night. Its a dense, cold darkness bequeathed to me by
my father. Writing this book will have enabled me to not chase it away but to explore it so as to be less afraid of it.
Im ready to face everything that lies ahead for me, my mother and my brothers.
And I Stopped Calling You Dad, by Caroline Darian, is published in France by Harper Collins.
